A Push For Change In The US Electoral College Gives Us Hope For Future Climate Action – CleanTechnica

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If you haven’t subscribed to Teresa Hanafin’s weekly newsletter at the Boston Globe, you’ve missed the pleasure of reading the longtime editorialist’s acerbic wit and hard-hitting interpretation of current events. This week’s newsletter was entertaining, as always, but it also contained a bit of information I hadn’t come across previously: a “soft secession” movement by Democratic governors. They’re working behind the scenes in ways that could reshape the US government, and one endeavor focuses on the Electoral College.

Did you know the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) has secured 209 electoral votes?

First, it makes sense to offer a quick overview of the current US Electoral College system. To be awarded the presidency, a candidate must win at least 270 of the 538 available electoral votes. The US Constitution gives state legislatures the right to choose how presidential electors are chosen. Since the 19th century, each state (with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska) has awarded its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state.

The US Electoral College devalues the voting power of individuals in states far from the national median partisanship. This makes the likelihood of casting a pivotal vote for a presidential candidate quite small for many voters and disproportionately likely for others. But under the NPVIC, states commit to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead.

The Compact will go into effect only when states controlling at least 270 electoral votes have joined. The National Popular Vote non-profit argues that the national popular vote winner should become President — the US presidential election system would convert to one-person, one-vote. It would also inspire candidates to campaign in all 50 states; in 2024, 94% of the general election campaign events took place in just seven states. To say it another way, 43 states and 80% of US voters were on the sidelines.

It has been enacted into law by 17 states and DC with 209 electoral votes (status in the states). It needs an additional 61 electoral votes to go into effect. This will guarantee that the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide will get enough Electoral College votes to become President.

To develop this conversation, let’s look at an interesting statistic in Hanafin’s newsletter: more than half of the 19 states that pay more to the feds than they get back are blue states. The divide between so-called “giver” states and “taker” states means that blue states are subsidizing red states.

According to political analyst Chris Armitage, 23 Democratic attorneys general now gather on near-daily Zoom calls — running strategy sessions, drafting legal briefs, filing lawsuits within hours of executive orders. “The infrastructure is built. The legal precedents are established. The money is there.” Armitage claims. “Blue states have spent two years sharpening these tools.”

When the blue state governors meet again next week, the agenda, according to three sources, includes a discussion of whether to coordinate state tax policy to offset federal cuts. As blue states prepare to deny federal agents access to their databases, their highways, maybe even their airspace, the soft secession isn’t coming, according to Armitage: “It’s here.”

What would the National Popular Vote Law Mean for Climate Action?

Climate change, like voting in a democracy, is a collective action problem — a conflict between the individual interest and the group interest.

What have researchers concluded about higher income, better educated voters — like those who typically live in blue states? They have a higher likelihood of following political developments, voting, and donating to campaigns. Voters who believe climate change is an important issue are significantly more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate. They also tend to offer greater support for climate action. Because fossil fuels are tied to urban air pollution, city residents could also be more favorable toward renewables, regardless of party, in upcoming elections.

It seems that many individuals hesitate to expend resources and effort to reduce their carbon footprints, as they recognize that their actions have only a marginal impact on the global carbon budget. Yet elections certainly influence collective action on problems like environmental pollution and climate change.

Matthew Burgess, CIRES Fellow and C-SEF director, explains why, even if climate change isn’t voters’ top issue, it is still such a strong predictor of their future voting. “One reason might be that most people see the evidence for climate change as so strong that, if a candidate were to deny or minimize that issue, they might trust that candidate less on other issues,” Burgess said. “Another reason might be that voters are beginning to see a connection between climate change and the kitchen table issues they care about more, like the economy, security, and health. But we can’t say for sure, and this is a key question for future research.”

One way to make sense of the correlation between active participation in a democracy and the desire for climate action is to examine emissions per voter. A cautious or conservative approach to estimating emissions responsibility of voters is to equally apportion the emissions total to the total electoral districts that elect members of Congress and then give equal responsibility to every registered voter in those districts.

A second way — with a very different outcome for the climate — is to apportion the projected emissions (in)action from an election only to winning electoral districts.

In either approach, the potential climate responsibility of voting is higher than most individual lifestyle decisions that the average person has the opportunity to make.

Important federal climate policies emerged during the Biden administration, including pathways to clean energy, investments in underserved and more vulnerable communities, and participation in international climate treaties. Of course, those policies were the result of voters’ choices in the 2020 elections. The Trump Administration has slashed everything from participation in the Paris Agreement to EV incentives to offshore wind installations.

Yet efforts continue to return climate action to the US political agenda. For example, the Environmental Voter Project (EVP) identifies millions of non-voting environmentalists and turns them into consistent voters. They estimate that 11.2 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2024 presidential election, and they conclude that many more skip midterm, state, and local elections. According to their website, they are identifying these non-voting environmentalists and “efficiently converting them into a critical mass of consistent voters that will soon be too big for politicians to ignore.”

EVP founder Nathaniel Stinnett says that, in our increasingly isolated lives, it’s important to connect with other people who have shared values and try to accomplish something together. “Good climate policy only happens when policymakers feel political pressure to lead on climate,” he adds.

If we dig back into to the soft secession idea, we find that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s 11 states have reduced emissions by 50% while the federal government rolled back climate regulations. The US Climate Alliance’s 24 governors represent 60% of the US economy.

Many US states are building a political infrastructure and governance that operates even more separately from the US government. Changes to the Electoral College via National Popular Vote action could make all the difference in future climate mitigation. Let’s make it happen!