Climate change is a high priority for many Americans. But on election days, many of those passionate environmentalists do not vote.
Stinnett: “We’ve identified 10.1 million who didn’t even vote in the 2016 presidential election, an election that was only decided by seventy-seven-thousand votes. So this is an enormous population of environmentalists just waiting to be energized.”
That’s Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project. His organization contacts these unlikely voters – Republican, Democrat, or Independent – with one simple message: Get to the polls.
Stinnett: “We don’t lobby politicians. We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t even try to persuade people to care more about climate because these voters are already environmentalists, and now we can just concentrate on tweaking their behavior and getting them to vote.”
Stinnett’s group is focusing on potential voters in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
Stinnett: “Our goal over the next two, three, four years in these states is to so change the electorate that no politician can run for anything without paying attention to climate change and the environment.”