Statement from CCI on the outcome of the Presidential election in the United States

As a climate-focused organization, we have to recognize the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States will likely disrupt the nation’s transition to a climate-smart economy and slow the global climate crisis response. We must also recognize that Mr. Trump has pledged to take actions that would undermine the rights and freedoms of women, girls, immigrants, and people of color. 

We reject Mr. Trump’s dehumanizing language and his threats to use the powers of public office to punish people and institutions that do not agree with his pronouncements. As many historians and public servants, and at least one federal judge, have noted in recent years, Presidents are not kings. Though a Supreme Court ruling granting him broad immunity for “official acts” creates real risks, Mr. Trump is still obliged to be a servant of the law. We expect the new administration to honor the transcendent and inalienable human rights of all people, whatever their situation and for all relevant institutions to hold them to that standard.

We also note with concern that Mr. Trump has threatened to use wartime military powers to round up millions of people without trial and to dismantle civil society organizations he views as opposed to his agenda. As a matter of principle, we must state clearly and consistently: vengeance, summary detention, and attacks on the free exchange of ideas have no place in any functioning society.

Many in the United States and around the world are shocked that 74 million people would vote for a man who attempted to overthrow their Constitutional republic four years ago, to stay in office against the wishes of the American people—a man found liable for sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies in a scheme to defraud voters. An important part of the 2024 US election seems to be that so many people have been effectively separated from vital factual information about Mr. Trump’s plans and about his record as President.

Tens of millions of people are living in information bubbles that make it difficult for them to access basic factual reporting. They see posts by friends and strangers that echo their own recent thinking, and they are propagandized nonstop by political action committees funded by undisclosed “dark money” donors. In the days after his reelection, millions of people searched for basic information about Trump’s policies; on Election Day itself, some asked Google whether President Biden had withdrawn his candidacy, which he had done in July.

In the United States and around the world, we face this troubling question: What safeguards are there for decency, freedom, and democracy, if most people have little access to commonly understood facts and unbiased reporting? Can we be free without information freedom? 

Whatever the wisdom of this view, millions of voters came to believe that Mr. Trump would lower their grocery bills and other everyday costs. Most of those people do not believe he will seek to end American democracy or make himself a dictator, nor did they grant him a mandate to rule outside the law. People of all political backgrounds must come together to ensure power is used honorably to address shared challenges and that the new administration operates, as it is bound to by the Constitution, in line with the law and universal rights. 

CCI values quality of information as a vital decision-making tool for citizens in all circumstances. In many ways, addressing the climate challenge can help us to restore quality of information as central to civic discourse and public policy, around the world. The United States, like all nations, is facing ever more costly climate shocks, both from sudden-onset and slow-moving disasters. No enterprise is safe in a world where single events can be described in terms of the percentage of GDP they cost. 

Cities, communities, institutions, and industries, are all moving forward with climate-related innovation and investment, across the United States. They are not doing this for political reasons, and political calculations will not change the basic math: being unprepared for worsening risk can sidetrack all of your best-laid plans. Quality information is required—and new tools will emerge to provide that information—to ensure we do not set oursevles up for costly failure after costly failure.

In 2017, we saw the United States transform its climate response into a decentralized all-of-society effort, as the federal government stepped back from leadership. We expect to see this kind of local cooperative leadership from all corners of the country in 2025 and beyond, whatever Mr. Trump decides to do on climate and energy. 

Our mission is one of no-nonsense optimism and principled civics. 

• No-nonsense means we will not put ideology, politics, or unconstructive word games ahead of the evidence and the need for clear-eyed, human-centered, locally rooted climate crisis response.
• Optimism means we work toward the best possible outcome in all cases, recognizing that aiming for less serves no one well.
• Principled civics means everyone has a right to have a say; at Climate Civics International, we want those who are unconcerned or skeptical about climate action to share their values and priorities and to help make climate crisis response more locally applicable and more conducive to shared success going forward.

To paraphrase a previous American President, civics is one of those things we do not because it is easy, but because it is hard. There is nothing easy about working through deep differences in perspective and material interest, to get to common ground and shared benefits, but all successful societies need to have processes that lead to this. 

Given the gravity of the climate challenge, we have no choice but to work toward that kind of more open, practical, informed, and ongoing civic cooperation. People of conscience, people who undertand the evidence, the trends, the risks, and how we can achieve a safer future, must not disengage.

We hope the United States can be a leader on climate-resilient development, at home and abroad, even if that means everyone but the President is doing their part to lead. Mr. Trump might be an obstacle, or he might—as American communities, states, innovators, and industries lead by example—learn to imagine a different kind of legacy for himself. He might, like his predecessor, do better for his country by empowering the whole of society to be an engine for climate resilience.

Our task, as ever, is to foster an atmosphere in which no-nonsense problem-solving and inclusive participatory process make a better world possible. We invite you to join us in this hard, but necessary work.