By Chase Woodruff, Colorado Newsline

The devastating and deadly impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the final weeks of the 2024 election have once again put the climate crisis top of mind for voters across the country. For many Coloradans, who’ve been impacted by severe droughts and unprecedented wildfires in recent years, climate issues have long been a priority. These natural disasters, in combination with human activities like fracking have been found to contaminate the natural habitats and water of native plants and animals that Coloradans are used to.

Climate change, the environment and natural resources were among the top five concerns identified by more than 7,000 Coloradans who have responded to the Voter Voices survey.

“[What] I would like to hear is transparency. We need avenues of data and conservation and also funding for that. Conservation isn’t just about animals. Humans are animals, and we’ve been living in environments for thousands of years, helping to manage and co-evolve with environments,” said Gabriella Lam, an environmental sociology student at Colorado State University. “How can we move forward, connect human and animal relationships, and work together to coexist?”

Self-described liberal and moderate respondents were far more likely to say climate and the environment were a top issue than conservatives — a trend that’s consistent with the results of the Colorado Health Foundation’s 2024 Pulse poll, which found that while 80% of Democrats believe climate change is an “extremely” or “very” serious problem, fewer than 1 in 10 Republicans say the same.

Thousands of scientists who contribute to periodic reports published by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in 2021 that the science of human-caused global warming is “unequivocal”: Greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere by human activity, mostly through the combustion of fossil fuels, are responsible for virtually all of the warming observed since the mid-18th century. Average global temperatures have risen by about 1.2 degrees Celsius since then.

What may sound like a small increase has already had profound impacts on the Earth’s climate. The extreme rainfall in the southeastern U.S. during Hurricane Helene, which caused an estimated 232 deaths and nearly $40 billion in damage, was made “up to 20 times more likely” by current levels of global warming, climatologists with the Berkeley National Laboratory estimated. Over the last two decades, higher temperatures in the Colorado River Basin have been the main driver of a “megadrought” that hydrologists have found is worse than any dry spell the region has experienced in at least 1,200 years.

In a special report released six years ago this month, IPCC scientists made a last-ditch appeal to governments around the world, urging policymakers to take steps to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert the catastrophic risks of further warming. The IPCC warned that doing so would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

That hasn’t happened.

Instead, Colorado, the federal government and many foreign countries have taken steps towards a gradual transition from fossil fuels to clean energy over the next several decades. They’ve made important, incremental progress in lowering projected future emissions, making the

worst-case scenarios for the climate by the end of the 21st century less likely. But efforts to date have fallen well short of science-based goals, and we’re still on track to roughly double the planet’s current level of warming.

For young voters like Lam and Mila Garelle-Essam, president of CSU’s mycology club and Voter Voices respondent, environmental policy is an underrepresented aspect of policy, and needs to be more prominently discussed in this election cycle.

“Nature is in all these issues, like in the housing crisis thing or food are some of the biggest ones connected to nature,” said Garelle-Essam. “When we farm in a really detrimental way, we get bad food, which connects to the healthcare. … Young people are kind of realizing, like, oh, food is where it’s at for me recently… it’s all connected.”

If climate change, the environment and natural resources are top concerns for you, here is where your vote has the most impact.

The presidential race

President Joe Biden’s signature climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, included about $370 billion in new federal funding and tax incentives for clean energy technologies like wind and solar generation, electric vehicles, more efficient home appliances and much more.

The Biden administration has paired the IRA’s incentives with major new Environmental Protection Agency rules aimed at limiting emissions from cars, power plants and oil and gas infrastructure. Altogether, these efforts add up to what is by far the most ambitious set of climate-action policies in U.S. history — but a recent analysis estimated they will only achieve about half of the emissions reductions recommended by scientists over the next decade.

Vice President Kamala Harris credits the IRA’s tax incentives with helping to create 800,000 new manufacturing jobs during Biden’s term, and promises to “build on (the administration’s) historic work” in confronting the climate crisis. At the same time, Harris has backed off her previous support for a ban on fracking, and instead boasts on the campaign trail that under Biden, domestic oil and gas production has reached its highest levels ever.

Former President Donald Trump has long called climate change a “hoax,” and during his first term he oversaw a sweeping rollback of Obama-era emissions regulations. The Washington Post reported in May that Trump asked a group of the country’s top oil executives to contribute $1 billion to his campaign during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago Club, pledging once again to reverse dozens of climate and environmental rules enacted by Biden’s EPA and other federal agencies.

In June, 2024 multiple justices appointed by Trump voted to repeal the 1984 Supreme Court decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Experts say that this decision keeps arms of the government like the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing legislation important to environmental conservation, which shows the power that presidential appointments have on environmental regulations and enforcement.

“It’s kind of taken away EPA’s ability to really regulate and track and monitor the pollution of U.S. waterways,” said Lam. “I believe the federal government has, has been doing a lot to try to tackle these really overarching policy decisions, but there’s a lot of disconnects with the federal government and everyday people.”

Congressional races

Neither of Colorado’s two most competitive congressional districts is a stranger to heated conversations about climate and energy.

Voters in the 3rd District — where Democrat Adam Frisch hopes to pull off an upset victory over Republican Jeff Hurd for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — are more directly impacted by climate change than in any other district in the state, and perhaps the country. The Colorado River megadrought has led to major stress on the water supplies relied on by Western Slope towns and agricultural producers, higher risks of catastrophic wildfires and growing threats to the region’s natural landscapes and outdoor recreation industries.

But the 3rd District also illustrates the political challenges of the energy transition. While Pueblo, its largest city, is home to a fast-growing clean energy sector, communities in Garfield County and other parts of the Western Slope face a more uncertain future amid sagging demand for the coal and natural gas resources they’ve prospered from in the past. Both Frisch and Hurd say they support “all-of-the-above” energy policies and have had harsh words for Biden’s efforts to respond to the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo faces a challenge from Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s battleground 8th District, another region on the front lines of climate and energy policy. Residents of Denver’s northern suburbs and southern Weld County have benefited from jobs, growth and tax revenues spurred by the northern Front Range’s booming oil and gas sector, but they’ve also borne the costs of harmful air pollution from fracking pads and industrial polluters like the Suncor refinery.

Caraveo has often cited her work as a pediatrician, witnessing firsthand the negative health impacts of air pollution on hundreds of young patients, as her motivation to run for office, and while serving in the state Legislature she co-sponsored a landmark 2019 bill to strengthen health and safety rules in the oil and gas industry. Evans, a first-term state lawmaker and former police officer, has repeatedly voted against Democratic-backed clean energy legislation, and his campaign website blames “climate alarmism” and “draconian Leftist climate regulations” for increases in the cost of living.

With the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives expected to come down to just a handful of congressional races across the country, voters in the 3rd and 8th districts could play a pivotal role in determining whether the IRA and other Biden-era climate policies are preserved and expanded, or weakened and repealed.

Lam believes that races like the ones happening in these two districts are emblematic of wider societal trends, both in more rural communities like the 3rd District, and in more urban districts like the 8th.

“Folks who are in vulnerable populations, whether it be super urban environments or really, really rural environments, are becoming increasingly separated from what causes environmental changes, despite them facing most of the consequences of them,” said Lam.

Lam says that inaction from legislators is keeping the corporations who are causing environmental changes from being held accountable when those changes lead to negative effects on people in urban and rural communities.

“We’re being very reactive when climate events happen, that’s when we respond and try to put things into place to stop things from happening again,” said Lam. “But can we be more preventative in our policy making now?”

State legislative races

With few exceptions, Republicans in the Colorado General Assembly have continued in recent years to bluntly deny the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Democrats, who won total control of state government in 2019 and have expanded their legislative majorities since then, broadly recognize the need to sharply reduce emissions, but haven’t always agreed on how to get there.

The emissions-cutting strategies pursued by Gov. Jared Polis’ administration have largely mirrored the Biden administration’s approach, pairing incentives for clean energy with modest regulations on polluters. Polis has publicly — and successfully — opposed efforts by Democratic lawmakers to impose more aggressive measures like a cap-and-trade scheme or legally-binding emissions limits, and his administration has shown no appetite for fighting climate change by curbing oil and gas extraction, which remains at near-record highs.

The results of this approach, too, have been broadly similar to results at the federal level: Despite meaningful progress, Colorado appears virtually certain to fall short next year of the very first science-based emissions target set by its 2019 climate-action law, which called for a 26% statewide cut by 2025. Without major improvements, the state’s next statutory goal, a 50% cut by 2030, could also be in jeopardy.

Colorado’s biggest climate victories over the last five years have come in the electricity sector, where state officials — with a big helping hand from the falling costs of wind and solar generation — have been able to coax and prod utilities into a series of agreements that will see all of the state’s remaining coal-fired power plants close by 2031.

But progress has been far slower in other sectors, especially transportation. Though EV sales are poised for continued growth, millions of gas-guzzling cars and trucks are likely to remain on Colorado’s roads for years to come. Under Polis, the state has opted against policies pursued in other states, like California’s ban on new gas-powered car sales by 2035 or a mandate on large employers to encourage multimodal commuting, and there are few signs that Coloradans are on the verge of voluntarily ditching their cars for the bus or an e-bike any time soon — at least not on a scale large enough to make a difference.

Lam says that a large part of why she thinks Coloradans are reluctant to voluntarily switch to more environmentally friendly transportation options is a lack of infrastructure.

“I think that would be a really good push in regards to helping to fight and create resilience in the face of climate change,” said Lam. “Having people depend less on cars and whatnot, making cities more walkable and eco friendly, so that people can bike.”

Faced with these challenges, Polis and top officials in his administration have opened up a new front in the state’s battle to reduce emissions from transportation and other sectors. Adopting the mantra that “housing policy is climate policy,” they want Colorado municipalities to “upzone” more of their neighborhoods for higher-density housing developments that create less dependency on car travel.

State legislators have approved parts of that agenda in piecemeal fashion, with new laws requiring more density in transit corridors, legalizing the construction of accessory dwelling units in most circumstances and prohibiting local minimum parking requirements that advocates say hinder the construction of multifamily housing. At the same time, they’ve enacted a new fee on oil and gas production to fund expanded public transit services and are moving forward with projects like Front Range Passenger Rail.

But even in a Legislature where Democrats hold large majorities, the most ambitious land-use proposals backed by Polis and his allies have hit a stone wall of opposition from lobbying groups representing local governments and a bloc of Democratic lawmakers from Front Range suburbs and affluent mountain towns. In some cases, opponents stripped reform legislation of enforcement mechanisms, and experts say the implementation of these new laws will need to be watched closely.

Garelle-Essam says that she wants policy makers to focus more on environmental education, so that the average voter is more knowledgeable as to what needs to be done in their community, and in the state as a whole.

“People in cities are pretty disconnected from nature,” said Garelle-Essam. “It’s hard for them to make nature based decisions… it keeps coming back to storytelling, and how we connect with people. [It] could be like documentaries made by politicians or by the state, or something telling stories of specific people.”

Further, Garelle-Essam says that as part of education, policy makers should look at making real education as entertaining as misinformation.

“How can we make the real solutions catchy,” Garelle-Essam asked. “Stories? That’s probably my only answer right now; stories.”

As climate-action advocates continue to pursue a vision for cleaner air, expanded transit and more walkable and bikeable neighborhoods in communities across the state, every vote at the Capitol will count.

Gideon Aigner, a journalism student at Colorado State University, contributed to this story.