EarthBeat Weekly: By calls and texts, faith groups prod climate voter to the polls
EarthBeat Weekly: By calls and texts, faith groups prod climate voter to the polls
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By calls and texts, faith groups prod climate voter to the pollsEarthBeat Weekly November 1, 2024
 (Dreamstime/Roman Samborskyi)
While some focus on the quadrennial undecided voters, others have directed attention to a different, though equally hard to pin down, cohort: the infrequent voter. Reaching these Americans has been the focus for months for several faith groups that have partnered with voter outreach organizations in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And specifically, low-propensity voters who already care about the environment. As I reported today, GreenFaith has partnered this election year with the Environmental Voter Project in its quest to reach 4.8 million infrequent environmental voters in 19 states. According to the nonpartisan Environmental Voter Project — which works to identify low-propensity voters who care about the environment and motivate them simply to head to the polls — more than 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election. "We don't usually focus on voting as an organization, but given how very important it is, we felt that we needed to put some energy towards this this year," said the Rev. Amy Brooks Paradise, a Unitarian Universalist minister and GreenFaith's North America organizer. While climate change has received scant attention from candidates and voters — it ranked 9th out of 14 issues in NCR's poll of Catholics in the swing states — the outcome of the presidential election will have far-reaching implications for national climate policy at a critical juncture. The next U.S. president will be in office for much of the rest of the decade, a period during which climate scientists say global greenhouse gas emissions must be nearly halved in order to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Harris has said she will continue implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the nation's largest-ever climate law that is directing more than $360 billion toward clean energy and other projects aimed at slashing national emissions. Trump, who was twice impeached while in office and faces criminal charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, has touted a refrain of "drill, baby, drill" and has called climate change "a hoax." He has pledged to again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and undo parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, including tax credits for electric vehicles. "With the extreme weather going on now, more than ever, this message of voting around environmental issues was really key and important to us, so we have had a chance to engage our community to take a step up in advocacy," said Marqus Cole, organizing director for Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, which has sent 800,000 text messages to people in the Peach State urging them to vote with creation in mind. Read more: In battleground states, faith groups call environmental voters to the polls
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