Americans, on average, do not show particular interest in climate issues. Only when faced with shocking phenomena such as floods, hurricanes and excessive snowfall do they discuss the causes and remedies to avoid witnessing such terrible episodes again. The disasters that recently hit Florida, Georgia or the fires in California have shaken the consciences of young people in particular. Millions of people, however, continue to consider climate something that does not affect everyday life. Environmental movements are active in the most populous states, but they are not yet a pillar of the new economy.
La electoral challenge between Donald Trump e Kamala Harris it is, therefore, the reflection of a country that on climate and environment has two candidates who think in opposite ways while the vast majority of citizens are more silent than expected. It is an America different from the ambitions and hopes of the pacifist and alternative movements that have shaped the consciences of entire generations.
Trump's Denialism
Trump's climate denialism has emerged forcefully during his presidency but the political propaganda against clean sources has not repaid the conservatives who have tried to sell Americans the idea of who knows what conspiracy. Pollution in big cities has not diminished, the tragic events have not been faced with the force that Trump had promised before arriving in the White House. The weather conditions have worsened and people have become sicker. Respiratory diseases in the elderly, especially in large cities, have increased dramatically.
When he reneged on the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, Donald Trump was convinced that many other Western states would follow him. That did not happen and he and his advisers began attacking the director general of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol for his positions against fossil fuels. The presidency of Joe Biden – with Kamala Harris as vice president – has taken cover with the 370 million dollars of theInflation reduction act (Ira): The largest investment in US history for climate and clean energy.
Kamala talked about it during the election campaign, but the environmental issue has never been at the top of the list compared to immigration, taxes, healthcare, inequalities. Yet climate change creates, indeed, social and economic inequalities that are transformed now into consensus, now into the refusal to vote. Tuesday will be a test for these issues too. On the other hand, there are those who wave the spectre of mass layoffs because of the green economy and a massive depression at the door. In the suburbs of large cities live people exposed to all types of climate change, without services, in conditions of energy poverty. Energy infrastructure, transportation, telecommunications, are increasingly vulnerable to climate change.
The future is not just for the US
The next few years will be crucial to knowing whether the industrialized world will be able to stop the climate drift. If and with what tools we will tackle the rebalancing of the planet where the US does not intend to give up its role as a leading country. Both contenders have very similar ideas on this. A possible victory for Trump would express, all things considered, a protectionist scenario, with duties on imports and the claim of being the world's largest producer of gas and oil. A victory for Kamala Harris would, on the other hand, give new confidence to the battle for the climate, despite the many adjustments to be made. At the “existential threat” as Harris has defined climate disasters, Democrats have so far responded with pragmatism and fresh money. No one denies the presence and activism, even in this election campaign, of fossil lobby and the games of global finance.
But it is well known that “money calls money” as demonstrated by the race to take the IRA subsidies, the work of the Democrats. Finance is a good thermometer, but it ignores the physicality of communities, the cultural differences and approaches of ordinary people. America does not have an ecological dream as we have learned in Europe. Its political horizon is limited by the antithetical visions of the two candidates for the White House. One thing is certain, however: Trump's victory would move back the hands of a epochal battle in which the US has the right-duty to be. And perhaps to start dreaming again.
