Had the election gone the other way...

The SEI is part of the DAS, part of LACCD, and so we don't take political positions as an organization. Readers of SEI Reports will notice that we don't advocate for candidates or parties, but rather keep our reporting objective and factual. In the future, however, we may add an editorial page, and in this blog we're free to offer our own opinions.

With that said, here's mine: Thank God we won the election! I don't think the great majority of American voters had any idea of just how drastic the planetary stakes were this past November. Had Trump been reelected, the US would have remained out of the Paris Agreement. The federal government would have continued to be a determined opponent of all climate emergency cooperation. It would have remained a forceful advocate for more drilling and production of fossil fuels. Four more years of that--with the US not leading the world but going in the opposite direction--and it's hard to see how the climate would have survived in the long run. Keeping warming to 1.5°C would have been impossible, and even 2°C would have been extremely difficult.

The UN IPCC Report from 2018 was crystal clear: we must reduce world carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and to 'net zero' by 2050, in order to keep the increase to 1.5°C. Even with an extraordinary effort, this is going to be hard, but it's at least possible. Had Trump been reelected, we would probably never have had the chance.