‘It’s really scary:’ 2024 election ignored climate change, Gen Z voters say
By Des Torres/Kent State NewsLab
Earth’s temperature has risen 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880, with the rate of warming over the past 40 years doubling since 1981. This warming of the atmosphere makes weather more unpredictable as well.
Among Millennials and Generation Z, 59% see climate change as an imminent threat. Gen Z, born between 1996 to 2012, grew up with hurricanes devastating the East Coast, tornadoes rampaging the South and fires burning down cities in the West.
Jillian Arthur, 19, feels as if politicians have put climate change on the back burner.
“It’s really scary, because it’s an immediate threat,” Arthur said. “It’s something we have to do something about now and if we do nothing, it’s going to get worse and we can’t control that. I feel like it’s one of the many things that older people are just not worried about because it’s not going to affect their future nearly as much as ours.”
During the 2024 election cycle, 20-year-old Lazuli Rogers noticed climate change missing from candidates’ messages.
“I would definitely say that Trump ignored it a lot more than Harris did. Though I think that it not was nearly enough,” Rogers said. “I don’t think there was nearly as much attention to it as there should have been.”
Rogers said he has done research on documents such as Project 2025, which was written by a right-leaning group, the Heritage Foundation. That document argues that the next conservative administration — now the incoming Trump administration — “should rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs.”
“It’s just the straight-up disregard for any sort of science that is mind-boggling to me,” Roger said. “It just drives me crazy. While I would have preferred a more active stance on climate change from the Harris-Walz campaign, I at least don’t feel that they have that disregard and just like denial of science that most of the Republican Party has nowadays.”
On multiple occasions, President-Elect Donald Trump has tweeted that global warming is a hoax or that it does not exist.
Arthur can pinpoint a moment in her life that she noticed it getting warmer.
“Growing up in Springfield, Mass.,” Arthur said. “There was like 6 feet [of snow] one Winter and that was normal. But I feel like now in winter, if it snows that’s a big deal,” she said.
However, only 45%of voters said that the environment was a top priority for them during this election.
Arthur believes people are just sick of hearing about global warming.
“It’s been around for awhile,” Arthur said. “It’s hard to say, maybe because it’s also not a human issue, it doesn’t have to do with people’s rights. So, maybe people feel a little disconnected to it because of that, even though personally it affects people but people just feel like it doesn’t.”
Garrett Chapin, a 22 year-old who works in retail, agrees that climate change was relatively absent from election rhetoric because it wasn’t at the forefront of voters’ minds, either.
“I think they were focusing more on the problems that voters were actually more concerned with,” Chapin said. “The economy, or the basis of democracy itself. So do I think it was ignored? Not really. I just don’t think that they brought it up because they felt as if there were more options for more important issues for this specific election.”
Chapin said that though he believes that politicians are talking about it, some are not paying as much attention as they should.
“It’s definitely undeniable,” Chapin said. “Scientists are saying the same thing, this is something that we might not be able to come back from, we’re past that. We’re almost at the point of no return.”
This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.