Climate voters in Georgia may help Harris in the wake of Hurricane Helene

This article was produced by Capital & Main. He is a co-publisher Rolling Stone with permission.

In 2020, Donald Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast in the state, one of the closest races in that election.

Since then, the Peach State has seen an increase in days with extreme heat, rising sea levels and frost damage to crops. The electorate is increasingly concerned about climate change, with 76 percent of registered voters now supporting congressional action on climate.

This time, with battleground voters closely divided between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, climate activists are determined to make sure their concerns help swing the election in favor of Harris, whose policies are seen as more climate-friendly than those of the former president .

Nearly half a million voters in Georgia who expressed concerns about climate change but did not vote in the last two election cycles are currently being targeted by the Environmental Voter Project. The vast majority of voters in this group (88 percent) are between the ages of 18 and 34, and almost half are black.

Of all states, “Georgia has the highest number of low-propensity climate voters,” said Nathanie Stinnett, director and founder of EVP, which is nonpartisan but tends to mobilize more Democratic voters because of its climate push. The group targeted young voters in the state through door-to-door canvassing, phone calls, direct mail and social media.

According to an EVP poll, 40 percent of young voters in five battleground states, including Georgia, will support only candidates who prioritize climate change – a “deal-breaker” for them. An additional 40% said they preferred candidates who prioritized tackling climate change.

“Young voters see an increase in extreme weather events in Georgia and rising energy bills largely driven by fossil fuel costs, and they recognize the need for greater investment in climate technology and solar energy,” said Marqus Cole, director of church engagement and outreach for Evangelical Environmental Network and former political candidate.

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Combined with Harris entering the presidential race in late July, the mobilization of climate-conscious voters could make a difference. Before the first debate in June, Trump led President Biden – then the presumptive Democratic nominee – in Georgia by five points. He now leads Harris by just 2.5 points, which is within the margin of error and statistically a draw.

Connie Di Cicco, political director of Georgia Conservation Voters, which tries to mobilize votes for climate-friendly candidates, said Black voters in the 18-34 age group moved eight points toward Harris. “That’s a huge number, and young Black voters who see climate change as a priority are much more likely to vote than other members of that demographic who don’t see the issue as a priority.”

Groups like Black Voters Matter are focusing on turning out young voters in Georgia and other states, visiting dozens of college campuses this year and registering thousands of students. Climate is a major concern for these students, said Fenika Miller, co-field director of Black Voters Matter. From urban areas like Atlanta, where students experience water quality issues and flooding, to Paine College, “where air quality is an issue,” she said, “they learn how climate and environmental justice impacts their daily quality of life and their own wallets and relating that to ballots and who has political power.”

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Georgia is not a fossil fuel producing country, so its energy and climate debates focus less on the local economy and jobs and more on the affordability and reliability of electricity. Climate activists recently lost two major battles over the state’s largest utility, Georgia Power, which gets only a tenth of its energy from renewable sources such as solar, biomass and hydroelectricity. Lawmakers extended the terms of members of the utility’s regulatory body, the Public Utilities Commission, thwarting efforts to elect a slate of clean energy advocates. And Republican Gov. Brian vetoed a bill to halt tax breaks for data centers, which put such a strain on the state’s power grid that the commission had to approve new gas-fired power plants, raising rates for residents in the process. Kemp.

“The thinking is that there would be more outrage and interest in climate and the politics around it, the relationship between politics and climate change,” said Larry Heiman, vice president of the Dunwoody Sustainability Commission in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody.

Recently, Georgia Power’s plan to leave coal ash in groundwater at some power plants was rejected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, highlighting the issue of environmental justice. Georgia, one of the countries with the highest coal ash production, releases over 6 million tons of ash, causing air and water pollution. And low-income residents and people of color are more likely to live in neighborhoods near the state’s coal-fired power plants.

“It is quite clear to me that climate change exacerbates other existing economic and social vulnerabilities,” said Patricia Yager of the Georgia Climate and Society Initiative. “But I haven’t seen climate be the first thing that comes to mind when I talk to people about their main concerns about quality of life. They talk about health problems that may be worsened by heat or smog. When I talk to them about their energy bills, we actually find that some of the city districts most affected by this situation have high energy burdens.”

The focus on climate has been linked to religious faith among some voters in the largely Southern Baptist region.

Cole, the church’s director of engagement, notes strong support from registered voters (75 percent) for clean energy projects, many of which have recently been funded through federal programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation. The state leads the nation in the number of clean energy projects launched since the IRA passed in 2022, with more than $15 billion invested in 28 projects, creating 15,723 jobs.

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Cole is hopeful that the tide will turn, pointing to the fact that both Kemp and Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff are competing for recognition for the state’s many renewable energy projects. Some of the projects, including the QCells plant outside Dalton, which the company says is the largest solar panel facility in the Western Hemisphere, have won praise from staunch conservatives like Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“The Christian value of ‘loving your neighbor’ can be the force that animates the nation’s narrative shift from a divisive political narrative of ‘going purple’ to a unifying, values-based vision of ‘going green,'” Cole emphasized.