Autumn has arrived and the leaves have turned red, orange and deep brown as 73-year-old Phyllis Blumberg hits the streets of West Philadelphia amid a record heat wave and a stubborn drought, a clipboard in her hand and climate on her mind.
The gravity of the world’s climate crisis has pushed the seasoned political canvasser and other seniors into neighborhoods like this to awaken would-be voters and prod them to cast ballots. Though some didn’t answer, Blumberg — after two decades of knocking on doors to get out the vote — accepted it as a reality.
“I don’t ever want to go to my grave thinking, ‘I didn’t do everything,’” she said.
The Montgomery County resident was among some 75 seniors who gathered on Oct. 22 in historic Clark Park, where climate activist Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental advocacy group 350.org, prepared them for a day of reaching out to potential climate voters. The stakes are clear to McKibben, who can rile up an audience at any moment by reciting a laundry list of natural disasters unfolding across the U.S.
“In the weird architecture of our electoral system, Pennsylvania is probably going to decide the presidency, [and] with it, the fate of our democracy and, in no small way, how high the temperature is going to get on our planet,” McKibben told Capital & Main ahead of the canvassing event. Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral college votes that could swing the presidency, and a population split between blue cities and deep red rural areas, is both politically powerful and painfully purple.
It’s for that reason, McKibben said, not mincing words: “This is the most important place on the planet.”
McKibben’s trip to Philadelphia came after stops in Montana and Georgia and ahead of barnstorming trips in Phoenix, Arizona, and Reno, Nevada, as part of the Silver Wave tour, a series of canvassing events mobilizing environmentally minded older Americans in key swing states. In Pennsylvania, his organization, Third Act, made up of adults over 60 who are worried about climate change, paired with the nonpartisan Environmental Voter Project, whose mission is to engage environmentally minded nonvoters in elections up and down the ballot. The two groups, with a cohort of volunteers, door-knocked their way across West Philadelphia in hopes of reaching the climate conscious who might not otherwise vote.
Just two weeks from Election Day, it may sound tired to remind Americans that this is the most important one of their lives. But McKibben means it. Scientists preach that averting total climate breakdown will require halving greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 levels within the next six years. “The next president after this one will be inaugurated in January of 2029,” McKibben told the audience at his pre-canvassing talk in Philadelphia. “So, this is the last election that counts for that.”
For him, that means pulling for Vice President Kamala Harris, who he has critiqued for failing to bring climate to the top of her policy platform but who he believes is the nation’s only shot at staving off total environmental catastrophe. Harris was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, a series of investments in clean energy that McKibben credits with disrupting the fossil fuel industry’s economic power. As California’s attorney general, Harris punished polluting oil and gas companies, and, in her September debate with Donald Trump for the nation’s top office, she cited the urgency of addressing extreme weather. Her economic plan vows to “[tackle] the climate crisis” and “[protect] public lands and public health,” while declaring that U.S. energy production “across a diverse set of sources, including natural gas and renewable technologies, is at historic levels, and the Vice President remains committed to supporting U.S. energy production growth.”
Oil production surged under Harris and President Biden, and she recently signaled support for the planet-warming natural gas industry, a position McKibben doesn’t share. But, he promised the room that, no matter who’s elected, he won’t be shy about pushing the White House to keep climate top of mind.
Former President Trump, meanwhile, has promised to “drill, baby, drill,” while soliciting $1 billion from oil and gas executives with the promise that, if elected, he’ll roll back clean energy incentives and regulations.
For Blumberg, who paraded through the streets, clipboard and sunhat in tow, the effects of the climate crisis are visceral. She grew up in a family of naturalists, and recalls taking her children hiking as soon as they could walk. She said she sees the environment changing all around her. She points to two maple trees that appear to be dying and laments the havoc humans have wreaked on ecosystems. “I’ve been really, really upset with people who don’t understand this is real,” she said. “We caused it. We can solve it.”
In the neighborhood where she knocked on doors, Blumberg spots environmental injustice all around her. A nearby botanical garden was the site of an industrial chemical spill. The historically Black neighborhood lacks tree canopy, leaving the streets noticeably hotter than nearby blocks.
Blumberg said she hopes a climate-minded candidate — though Environmental Voter Project, a bipartisan group, cannot push for any one party — is the obvious choice for voters here.
But in other parts of Pennsylvania, where deep red rural areas stand in stark contrast to Philadelphia’s blue islands, the choice is less obvious. Many in the rural areas self-identify as conservationists, even as they support Trump’s embrace of oil and gas. Some receive royalties from the state’s abundant fossil fuel production or have worked the oil or gas fields themselves. Some fear government intervention as much as they resent corporate greed. More Pennsylvanians embrace regulations on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, than either candidate seems to acknowledge, new data shows — but even among these voters, many remain comfortable with the technology.
In battleground districts — clustered north of Philadelphia and around Pittsburgh, the picture gets more complicated, and both parties have turned their attention to these areas, hoping to take advantage of any doubt.
“We don’t tell people who to vote for; we’re just mobilizing them to vote,” said Shannon Seigal, organizing and field director for Environmental Voter Project. “We want so many climate voters voting that every person running for office has to be a climate leader.”
A handful of out-of-towners who hit the streets alongside Blumberg did so out of their own sense of urgency.
“I’m just really scared about the outcome of the election, but as we say in the climate movement, action is the antidote to despair,” said Veronique Graham, a Brooklyn-based administrator with Third Act and a longtime U.S. resident who cannot vote because she is not yet a citizen. Her daughter, Charlotte, who missed a day of school to canvass, is similarly constrained: At 15, she’s deeply concerned about the climate crisis, but too young to vote. “I want to vote so bad,” she said. “I’m really scared.”
Roberta Rominger, 69, who flew in from Renton, Washington to canvass Pennsylvania voters, did so with a different sense of urgency. “In Washington, our votes are not worth very much,” she said, referring to the state’s long liberal history. “I have come here in hopes of making a difference in the election. I really, passionately want to make a difference.”
When Pennsylvanians head to the polls Nov. 5, many will do so with their own experiences of climate catastrophe that may make the difference in their decision. In August, extreme flooding swept north central Pennsylvania amid Tropical Storm Debby. In June, Pittsburgh residents endured near-record temperatures as it was blanketed by a heat dome. Last summer, wildfire smoke choked the state as it wafted in from Canada.
These, and other natural disasters, stand as reminders to McKibben that the timeline for action is ever shortening. “If we don’t win soon,” he said, “we don’t win.”
All photos by Matt Gunther.
Copyright 2024 Capital & Main.
