Climate is on the ballot around the world
More than 40 countries that are home to about half of the world’s population — including the United States, India and South Africa — will be electing their leaders this year.
My colleagues at The Times report that it’s “one of the largest and most consequential democratic exercises in living memory,” which “will affect how the world is run for decades to come.”
Climate is front and center on many of the ballots. The leaders chosen in this year’s elections will face daunting challenges laid out in global climate commitments for the end of the decade, such as ending deforestation, tripling renewable energy capacity and sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are the issues and races to watch closely:
Major climate policies at stake
Climate change is one of the issues on which Republicans and Democrats are farthest apart.
President Biden signed what many called the most powerful climate legislationin the country’s history. Former President Trump, who is likely to be the Republican presidential candidate — especially after his victory in the Iowa caucuses — withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 treaty that guided much of the world’s progress in curbing climate change.
Republicans have also prepared a sweeping strategy called Project 2025 if Trump wins back the White House. As my colleague Lisa Friedman wrote last year, “the plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.”
European Union incumbents will also be defending their climate policies, known as the Green Deal, in elections for the European Parliament in June.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President who is expected to seek re-election, kicked off a series of policies designed to ensure the bloc achieves carbon neutrality by 2050. But opposition to these policies is growing. Farmers in several countries have tried to block measures to restore natural ecosystems, while homeowners have grown increasingly worried about the cost of the green energy transition.
Opinion polls analyzed by Reuters in a commentary piece suggest far-right lawmakers, who oppose Green Deal policies, will grow in number but remain a minority.
Climate may also play a role in elections in Britain, which may happen in the second half of the year. They became a key point of disagreement between the Labour Party and the ruling Conservative Party, which are trailing in the polls, after prime minister Rishi Sunak rolled back some of the country’s most ambitious climate policies.