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Election season is about to heat up — literally. The question is whether voters will care.
Of the 158 days left to go before the presidential election, 94 of them will fall during the summer. Such an alignment is not entirely a coincidence — the 29th U.S. Congress designated the first Tuesday in November for voting in order to avoid summer planting and the autumn harvest — but in 2024, the overlap between the hottest months of the year and the feverish finale of the presidential campaign is especially apropos.
Fire agencies have warned of an “above average” wildfire season in the Southwest, northern Great Lakes, northern Great Basin, and Hawaii. Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued the most active hurricane outlook in its history. The western Great Plains and the intermountain West are in a worsening drought. Forecasters at AccuWeather predicted widespread heat waves over much of the eastern and southern United States in the coming months. Emergency managers are bracing for the “new normal” of deadly summer rainfall.
But will a wet, hot, climate change-driven summer be enough to tilt the election in someone’s favor?
We know that climate-related issues can swing elections — clean air and water, cheap energy, and creating new high-paying jobs all poll exceptionally well. Voter interest tends to drop off, however, when these things are framed as climate issues. And on the darker flip side, the realities of living in a hotter world, including “unchecked migration, economic stagnation, and the loss of homeland,” are “precisely the kind of developments that have historically fomented authoritarian sentiments,” Justin Worland argued in Time earlier this year. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly proved eager to go toe-to-toe with President Joe Biden on things like clean energy, electric vehicles, and climate science.
But how much extreme weather events themselves could swing the November election is far less clear. Research suggests that even living through a traumatic event like a wildfire or hurricane isn’t necessarily enough to convert you into a climate voter. “Experience matters, but I don’t know that it matters in the way that people wishcast it to,” Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who has studied the relationship between proximity to wildfires and pro-environmental voting, told me.
As Mildenberger explained, “In order to experience a wildfire or a heat wave or a flood and have that galvanize you into wanting to see more ambitious climate action, you’d have to experience and understand yourself as a victim of climate change.” For decades, fossil fuel interests have worked to undermine the scientific narrative and cast doubt on the links between extreme weather and climate, which is why even Republicans who experience disasters firsthand still “fall back onto stories about how there have always been wildfires, there have always been droughts.”
In other words, this is not a chicken-or-egg enigma. How voters already think about climate change is what shapes their ensuing narratives about disasters. Peter Howe, a professor of geography at Utah State University who studies public perceptions of climate change, conducted a survey of research on behavioral outcomes in relation to extreme weather that reinforced this idea. He found that “extreme weather may reinforce opinions among people who are already worried about climate change, yet be misattributed or misperceived by those who are unconcerned.”
There is evidence that linking climate change with extreme weather could actually backfireat the ballot box for green-minded candidates. A 2022 study led by Rebecca Perlman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Republicans who saw references to climate change after a wildfire became less likely to support an energy tax that would “protect against future wildfires and other natural disasters.” Concerningly, this pattern even showed up (albeit with “weaker and generally nonsignificant effects”) among Democrats and Independents, leading Perlman and her coauthor to suggest that “on the margin, attributing weather-related natural disasters to climate change may be a losing political proposition with voters.”
Perlman confirmed that she would be “surprised” if extreme summer weather had “much impact on voting at the national level” when I reached her via email. But that “doesn’t mean it will be precisely zero,” she went on.
Mildenberger made a similar point. Though a hurricane or a wildfire is unlikely to peel Republican voters away from Trump (and might even push some deeper into his arms), if you take a more regional lens, then you could “easily expect extreme weather events to reshape how people are prioritizing their vote, or their likelihood of volunteering, or how they’re talking to their friends and family about the current administration.”
But while hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and heat waves can confirm Democratic priors and motivate liberals who wouldn’t otherwise have voted, Matthew Burgess, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, warned me against lumping all conservatives together as uniformly undisturbed. “Even deep red parts of Colorado get worried about drought and water scarcity,” he pointed out.
Burgess’ research has found that Independents and liberal-to-moderate Republicans worry about climate change only slightly less than moderate-to-conservative liberals do; it’s conservative Republicans who are set far apart from the rest of the electorate, sometimes skewing results. In other words, while many studies look at extreme weather events and climate change attribution and frame the results as Republicans versus Democrats, the actual split in how voters interpret extreme weather events might be better framed as between the most conservative Republicans and everyone else.
The bigger question, in Burgess’s mind, is whether extreme weather could ever rival issues like crime or inflation, which generally affect a greater portion of the electorate, for a place in voters’ hearts. “If you had a really big natural disaster that directly affects a broad swath of people, and whose link to climate change is really clear — that would be the type of thing I would expect to have an effect” on voters, Burgess said.
Admittedly, it’s scary to imagine what exactly that event might be. A massive wildfire season with smoke that blankets the entire country or breaks out in a place we don’t expect? Hurricanes that pummel both the East Coast and the West Coast? So much flooding that whirlpools appear in the streets of American cities? Or something we haven’t already experienced and maybe haven’t even anticipated?
If there were ever a summer to find out, it’d be this one. It’s another “hottest year ever” on Planet Earth, and even if Americans don’t ultimately vote like it, that truth will remain.
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On executive orders, the Supreme Court, and a “particularly dangerous situation” in Los Angeles.
Current conditions:Nearly 10 million people are under alert today for fire weather conditions in southern California • The coastal waters off China hit their highest average temperature, 70.7 degrees Fahrenheit, since record-keeping began • A blast of cold air will bring freezing temperatures to an estimated 80% of Americans in the next week.
High winds returned to Los Angeles on Monday night and will peak on Tuesday, the “most dangerous” day of the week for the city still battling severe and deadly fires. In anticipation of the dry Santa Ana winds, the National Weather Service issued its highest fire weather warning, citing a “particularly dangerous situation” in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties for the first time since December 2020.
A new brush fire, the Auto Fire, ignited in Oxnard, Ventura County, on Monday evening. It spread 55 acres before firefighters stopped it. Meanwhile, investigators continue to look for the cause of the Palisades Fire, which ignited near a week-old burn scar, a popular partying spot, and damaged wooden utility poles, according to a New York Times analysis.
National Weather Service
Trump is planning an executive order banning offshore wind developments on the East Coast, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported Monday. The news came from New Jersey Republican Representative Jeff Van Drew, who said he’s working with Trump’s team to “to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
Van Drew’s press release also said that this order is “just the beginning,” and that it would be finalized “within the first few months of the administration,” a far cry from the Day One action Trump has promised. Van Drew had earlier told New Jersey reporters that the ban would last six months.
Meanwhile, in other executive order news, Biden issued an order on Tuesday directing the Energy and Defense departments to lease federal lands for “gigawatt-scale” data centers, according to E&E News, but only if they bring online enough clean energy to match their facilities’ needs.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by Utah attempting to seize control of the “unappropriated” federal lands in the state. Opponents argued that the lawsuit, if successful, would have put public lands across the West on the path to privatization since Utah and other states likely couldn’t afford to manage them and would have had to sell off much of them. However, “while the Court’s decision denying original review of Utah’s claims is welcome news for our shared public lands, we fully expect Utah’s misguided attacks to continue,” Alison Flint, the senior legal director at The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.
As I reported last month, the Utah lawsuit organizers “seem prepared to make an appeal to Congress or the Trump administration if the Supreme Court doesn’t make a move in their favor,” given that “funding for the messaging for Stand for Our Land, the publicity arm of the lawsuit, has reportedly outpaced the spending on lawyers.
Also on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a fossil fuel industry argument to block states, municipalities, and other groups from seeking damages for the harms caused by climate change. The appeal by Sunoco, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and others stemmed from a high-profile lawsuit in Honolulu that seeks to hold energy companies accountable for causing “a substantial portion” of the effects of climate change. Had the Supreme Court taken up the case, similar lawsuits by California and others likely would have been paused during deliberations. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, responded to Monday’s decision by claiming activists will now “make themselves the nation’s energy regulators.”
A little over a week after the start of New York City’s congestion pricing, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released data showing significant decreases in the amount of time passengers spend in inbound traffic. On average, during the morning commute, traffic times have decreased by 30% to 40%; in some cases, such as during rush hour in the Holland Tunnel, travel time has been cut in half, going from over 11 minutes to under five. Due to the traffic reductions, some bus routes are up to 28% faster now than at the same time last year. “It has been a very good week here in New York,” MTA deputy chief Juliette Michaelson said in a news conference.
So far, the MTA has seen an average of 43,000 fewer drivers entering the congestion pricing zone, which begins below 60th St. and costs $9 during the day. While Gothamist notes that this is only a 7.3% reduction compared to last January, many New Yorkers say congestion pricing effects are visibly noticeable in the streets of lower Manhattan.
The Brooklyn Bridge as congestion pricing went into effect. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Oil and gas magnate Harold Hamm is throwing a “swanky party” to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump, on whose campaign he spent more than $4.3 million, according to the research group Fieldnotes and The New York Times. Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum was among the invitees, although an advisor has said he does not plan to attend; one of the party’s several major oil and gas industry sponsors, Liberty Energy, was founded by Chris Wright, Trump’s nominee for Energy Secretary.
In May, Trump met with oil and gas executives at his Mar-a-Lago resort and promised industry-friendly tax and regulatory policies and an aggressive stance against wind energy if they helped fund his White House bid. The oil and gas industry ultimately invested some $75 million in efforts to help re-elect the former president and contributed millions to his legal defense.
25% — That’s the level of tariff Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Canada should prepare for after a meeting with incoming President Trump — and not expect exceptions for its crude oil exports to the U.S., per Bloomberg’s Javier Blas.
Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
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Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.