The Electoral College Is Also a Climate Problem
The climate crisis is intimately connected to state laws that award all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most popular votes in each separate state.
Here is some of what Peter Beinart in The Atlantic says:
"Joe Biden condemned Donald Trump’s handling of the wildfires devastating the American West and pledged to 'put our nation on the road to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.' That’s good news. But it was Biden’s first speech on the subject, even though California, Oregon, and Washington State declared states of emergency almost a month ago. He still hasn’t visited the devastation.
"Unlike Trump, Biden hasn’t been slow to address the wildfires because he doubts climate change. As he mentioned in his speech, he’s laid out a more ambitious agenda to tackle it than any other presidential nominee in American history. He’s been slow to address the fires because he’s obeying the dictates of the Electoral College....
"The Electoral College also undermines the fight against climate change. If every additional vote in California, Oregon, and Washington—which between them boast roughly 50 million people—mattered as much as every additional vote in a swing state, Biden might have spent the past few weeks touring the West Coast and explaining how his plans can save its residents from a climate apocalypse that threatens to make their home unlivable.
"But the Electoral College rules that out. Biden has no incentive to run up his margin in three reliably blue states. Instead, he’s singularly focused on purple ones in the Midwest. So far this month, he’s visited Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and he’s headed to Minnesota next week. Conventional wisdom holds that in a Midwest built on fossil fuels and heavy industry, focusing on climate change is politically risky. ...
"This is the problem with an electoral system that allows presidential candidates to ignore most of America’s voters. Sometimes the Americans being ignored are facing problems that presidential candidates desperately need to prioritize."