All climate is local…and so are elections
It is a truism that you can’t have environmentally friendly regulation without politicians who believe such rules are required!
It shouldn’t need saying that anyone worried about climate change should be voting for politicians who share their concerns.
Thus far, it seems, Arizona in the American southwest has defied commonsense and logic.
Despite punishing heat waves and persistent water shortages the Arizona state legislature has stayed with the no-change position adamantly adopted by its longstanding Republican leadership.
Until now.
Semafor’s Tim McDonnell has an excellent piece on how the battles over future climate policy in the US, the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, are increasingly focussing on local election races.
One of the more interesting examples is District 17 of Arizona’s state senate. There, Republican Vince Leach, who served in the legislature from 2015 until 2022, and Democrat John McLean, defence engineer and newbie politician. The District 17 election is tight and it’s one of four such seats that could flip control of the Arizona state legislature for the first time since the 1960s.
And that could make a huge difference to the state. As the piece notes: If Arizona were to elect a Democrat-controlled legislature, it “would likely focus on overturning Republican policies designed to slow the energy transition, including a law prohibiting restrictions on the use of natural gas in buildings”.
The stakes appear to be slowly coming into focus for the state. Rather than investing in “high-profile national races”, climate activist groups are now prioritising local ones, according to the piece. It quotes Caroline Spears, executive director of the advocacy group Climate Cabinet, which supports local candidates and is keen to help the one offering environmentally friendly policies.
The Democratic candidate has been talking a great deal about groundwater regulation — with Arizona increasingly plagued by water shortages, as I found when I visited last year — but it’s not clear if this will take him to victory.
That said, it’s worth staying with the script for all climate is local…and ultimately, so are elections.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
