How can ordinary people respond as the politics of climate change evolve?

Goodbye, Paris Agreement; hello, National Energy Dominance Council, the body tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel-forward agenda. The executive order establishing the council, announced on Valentine’s Day, is only one of a dizzying variety of actions the new administration has taken to halt the nation’s progress on climate change. For many people concerned about rising temperatures, the mood is grim.

Nathaniel Stinnett says the best way to move beyond this despair is to take action. After working on political campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels, Stinnett founded the Environmental Voter Project in 2015, aiming to convince more people who care about climate change to engage with the electoral process. He says that even in the current political tumult, ordinary people have the power to bring about meaningful change.

Yale Climate Connections spoke with Stinnett about optimism, solidarity, and the importance of upcoming elections.

This interview was edited for clarity and condensed.

Yale Climate Connections: For Americans concerned about climate change, the Trump administration’s actions to date are obviously deeply worrying. Can you offer any reasons for optimism? What’s giving you hope in this moment?

Nathaniel Stinnett: Well, there are two ways to think about optimism. One is a mathematical calculation of whether you think the future will be better or worse. Using that rubric, no, I’m not that optimistic, right? Anybody who looks at the science can’t think we’re heading in a great direction.

But a different way to think about optimism is whether you walk through each day feeling hopeful. I do feel optimistic in that sense, and I think it’s because I try to focus my attention on things where I can have an impact. No matter how scary and crazy events are in the world, I still have control over where to put my own personal attention.

YCC: In this political environment, what are some steps that ordinary Americans can take to be part of the climate solution?

Stinnett: Volunteering is magical. It makes you feel better while also building political power for the climate movement. That can take the form of volunteering for local and state political campaigns or advocacy efforts, but it can also be something like volunteering for a local conservancy. It gives you the ability to see things changing around you, which all of us need, while also creating the opportunity for solidarity.

Solidarity may seem like a really old-fashioned word, but in our increasingly isolated lives, it’s so important to connect with other people who have shared values and try to accomplish something together. It’s so empowering and it creates so much hope. It also just happens to be a damn good tactic for changing society. So I think volunteering is almost a silver bullet for everything that ails you personally and ails society at large.

YCC: You work with a lot of volunteers at the Environmental Voter Product. What does volunteering with you look like?

Stinnett: So there will probably be over 5,000 local and state elections this year across the United States. At the Environmental Voter Project, we will probably be active in close to 300 of those elections. We’re going to be mobilizing 6 million low-propensity climate voters [people who care about climate change but don’t vote] in almost 300 elections across 21 states, and we’re going to work with thousands of volunteers helping them call these first-time climate voters. They will be knocking on doors, canvassing, and writing postcards.

It’s completely nonpartisan. You won’t mention any candidates. You certainly won’t mention any political parties. You won’t even be talking about climate and environmental issues. All you’ll be doing is trying to convince these nonvoters who care deeply about climate and the environment to start voting more often. And that’s so important because it increases our political power at a time when that’s the big missing ingredient for addressing so many parts of the climate crisis.

YCC: Your team has described the 2024 election as a landslide win for nonvoting. What do we know about who votes and who doesn’t in the U. S.? What are the consequences of a widespread failure to vote?

Stinnett: In the 2024 election, almost 86 million eligible voters didn’t vote, compared to only 77 million who voted for Donald Trump and 74 million who voted for Kamala Harris. So if “Did Not Vote” was the name of a candidate, they would have won in a landslide. And not just in the popular vote. We calculated that if “Did Not Vote” had been a candidate, would have gotten 265 electoral college votes – almost enough to win on their own, compared to Trump getting 175 and Harris getting only 98.

So an enormous number of people who could have exercised their political power ended up sitting on the sidelines. Now, what’s the impact of that? It’s obviously hard to tell what’s in people’s minds who, almost by definition, don’t get surveyed. But what I can tell you is that plenty of research shows that politicians are more likely to prioritize the issues that voters care about than the issues that nonvoters care about. And that makes sense, right? Politicians are in the business of collecting votes, not non-votes.

And the really important thing to understand is that in the United States, who you vote for is secret, but whether you vote or not is public record. So every politician only has to open their laptop and look at the public voter file to figure out who in their district votes and who doesn’t.

So when so many Americans don’t vote, they are destroying any possibility that any politician will ever care about them or their priorities, because it is public record that they are taking themselves out of the game. And that’s especially bad news for the environmental movement because so many young people and so many people of color who care deeply about climate change, clean air, and clean water aren’t voting and aren’t wielding all that potential political power.

YCC: In the U.S., we obviously hear much more about presidential elections than other elections. What are the stakes in the state and local elections you’re focusing on for the next few years? Why are they important for climate change?

Stinnett: Good climate policy only happens when policymakers feel political pressure to lead on climate. That’s not just in the halls of Congress, it’s at your local city hall, too. So the last thing the climate movement can afford to do right now is wait for the midterms. We can’t afford to wait for U.S. politics to change. We need to flood local and state elections with climate voters in 2025 and change the political environment ourselves. Now is the moment.

Let’s consider some of the upcoming elections. In 2025, there are open gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Also, there will be really big mayoral elections in New York City and Detroit and Boston and Omaha and elsewhere.

The policy levers that are at play in these state and local elections are enormous. Just look at how congestion pricing has already changed people’s lives in New York – dramatically reducing their daily commutes. If you ask any American what the worst part of their day is, they’re probably going to tell you about their commute to and from work, and this one policy change has freed up half an hour of people’s time. And we’re not even getting to the knock-on effects of reduced air pollution and increased funding for public transit. [Editor’s note: The Trump administration is pressuring New York to end congestion pricing. The dispute is likely headed to court.]

And your local and state policymakers can enact housing policies like eliminating zoning districts that only allow for single-family homes. That’s not just good housing policy, but it reduces sprawl, creates more walkable neighborhoods, and reduces air pollution. States can pass energy-efficient building codes that help landlords and tenants save money while also reducing air pollution. Not to mention, in all our states, the main energy regulatory bodies are the state government. In many ways, if you’re trying to change the way the electric grid gets you power, there is more leverage in state politics than federal politics.

So all these parts of the climate crisis are subject to local and state policies. There are just so many opportunities and such high stakes in 2025. You can spend the next nine months volunteering for political campaigns that will end up having an enormous impact on the climate crisis and on your daily life in your neighborhood.