The anthropogenic global climate crisis and related crises (e.g., plastics pollution, biodiversity loss) are the potentially existential, era-defining challenges of our time. As atheists, we have what is arguably a greater responsibility to respect, understand, and apply understanding of science than those who adhere to belief systems and faith traditions that amount to little more than magical thinking. We will need evidence-based policies and proven leaders to continue, or in some cases begin, meaningfully addressing these threats to our planet.
Before ever getting involved with American Atheists, I was a climate activist, and I remain one today. I am Board President of the nonprofit organization Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action (MOVCA), a role I have held in one form or another since the organization’s founding in October 2015. I’ve also served on the boards and executive committees of other environmental organizations centered in West Virginia. MOVCA’s mission is to educate, inspire activism, and build coalitions around addressing the global climate crisis, a mission we’ve had great success in regionally and, to some extent, nationally.
Public policy is crucial in addressing our climate and environmental woes, especially at the federal level. Congress, the White House, and the federal judiciary have the power to either make enormous strides or be an insuperable detriment—a contrast that has been made quite clear between the previous two presidential administrations, as well as the congresses and courts they’ve had to work with.
The Trump Administration was an almost unmitigated climate and environmental nightmare. I say “almost” because the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act was a substantive victory for conservation—with caveats. As president, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and appointed polluting industry flunkies like Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Hundreds of rollbacks of regulatory protections for air, water, species conservation, and public health were enacted by Trump’s EPA, Department of the Interior, and other federal agencies.
Trump’s three appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court also worked swiftly with the existing right-wing justices on cases brought or supported many times by West Virginia’s Attorney General (and now Republican gubernatorial candidate) Patrick Morrisey to perpetrate massive environmental and climate harms. The most notable of these cases was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the Court’s ultra-conservative majority overturned what is known as the “Chevron Doctrine” regarding federal agencies’ ability to enact regulations.
The Biden Administration’s greatest successes, in addition to reversing most of the Trump rollbacks, have been the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA). These laws represent massive investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, and the development or redevelopment of our built infrastructure.
Coupled with a very active and prolific EPA under Administrator Michael Regan, the Biden Administration’s overall climate and environmental impact has been extremely positive—albeit with an asterisk.
My own state’s senior U.S. Senator, Joe Manchin III, has hampered this progress using his outsized influence in the Senate. The badly-needed Build Back Better Act was supported by majorities of those polled nationwide, but because of Manchin, we had to settle for the IRA, the IIJA, and their drawbacks (including the expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling areas). Manchin also worked with President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bypass courts of jurisdiction and half-century-old bedrock environmental laws to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303.5- mile polluting monstrosity set to carry two billion cubic feet a day of methane gas across West Virginia and Virginia.
I know that Vice President Kamala Harris takes climate and environmental issues seriously given the reported influence she had on the aforementioned laws (for example, environmental justice commitments such as the Justice40 initiative and an intense focus on heat pumps) and her support of Green New Deal legislation when she was a senator. I also know that Governor Tim Walz is committed to climate and environmental action because of measures like Minnesota’s commitment to carbonfree electricity by 2040 and a ban on polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals.”
The contrast on climate in November couldn’t be clearer. As our popular yard signs say, we at MOVCA hope you’ll be a climate voter.