"Climate change, barring some enormous visible catastrophe on U.S. soil, is unlikely to be a major issue in the election," said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. "But many people will be working to raise its profile, and there will be more discussion than there was before."
In America it qualifies as progress if the issue plays even a slightly larger role than in the past.
Major donors on both sides of the aisle have pledged millions of dollars to elect leaders on climate into state and federal offices. Environmental groups expect to at least match, if not exceed, the $85 million they spent during the 2014 midterm elections. The SuperPAC NextGen Climate, created by hedge fund manager-turned-climate activist Tom Steyer, said it will spend "whatever it takes" to defeat GOP climate skeptics. Republican businessman Jay Faison plans to devote $175 million to sway the GOP to take climate risks seriously.
Still, they are hardly equal counterweights to fossil fuel interests. The Koch brothers, for example, have quietly used their wealth to influence politics for decades and whose network intends to spend $886 million this election season.
All three major contenders for the Democratic White House nomination—Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley—have made global warming a cornerstone of their campaigns. They've released climate and clean energy plans, aired ads on the subject and raised the issue at rallies, town halls and debates.
Most of the presidential debates have included at least one question about climate change, the major recent exception being the Republican debate on Dec. 15, when it was ignored just days after world leaders signed the first major international treaty to fight global warming.
But environmentalists know they have an uphill battle in not just raising voters' awareness, but also getting them to consider candidates' differing climate views in making a decision at the ballot box. Two out of three Americans believe climate change is happening, but only one-third say they are at least moderately concerned about it, according to recent polling. Global warming consistently ranks below the economy, terrorism, and gun control on voters' priorities lists.
Environmental leaders said they will use advertising campaigns to emphasize how high the stakes are. The 12 remaining Republican presidential contenders either deny the scientific evidence for global warming or question humans' role in it. Businessman and TV personality Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate, told CNN in September that he is "not a believer in climate change." In 2012, Trump posted on Twitter that global warming is a "concept…created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
Most of President Obama's climate action has been done through executive order, or through federal regulation, including the Clean Power Plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants. That means they are reversible by whoever wins the White House next. The international climate treaty signed in December did not require approval by Congress, but compliance is also voluntary.
Congress has been one of the biggest roadblocks to climate action in the U.S., but with more than one-third of the Senate up for reelection along with the entire House, that could shift after Nov. 8. The same goes for the state level. Eight of the 12 open gubernatorial seats are considered winnable by either party, though some are more of a toss up then others.
Read more at 2016: The Politics of Climate Unlikely to Change
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