Vote-Climate is a Minnesota-based environmentalist organization that supports restructuring the energy sector to fight climate change and opposes the construction of new energy pipelines in Minnesota.
Policy Positions
Vote-Climate claims that absorption of carbon emissions by the earth’s oceans may lead to acidification and “collapse of the entire food chain.” [1] Vote-Climate states that climate change will lead to “famines and [that] wars over water and food will all increase” [2] and that limiting increases in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius is required to “maintain a climate similar to what humans have known in their entire 10,000 history,” while higher increases is equivalent to playing “Russian roulette” with our future. [3] Vote-Climate claims that sharply reducing non-weather dependent emissions in this decade is “necessary” to maintain our current climate conditions. [4]
Vote-Climate supported President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, [5] a proposed rule that sought to regulate non-weather dependent emissions from power plants through forced reinvestments/re-engineering. The plan would have reduced 32% of non-weather dependent emissions from power plants in the United States by 2030. [6]
In addition to expensive structural changes to power generation in the United States, Vote-Climate advocates for sustainable agriculture, [7] which results in more expensive food products, [8] electric vehicles, [9] and carbon tax plans [10] that would tax energy generation at a flat rate of $40 per ton of CO2 emissions. [11]
Activities
Vote-Climate recommends several environmentalist podcasts. [12] Recommendations made by Vote-Climate include the Hot Take Podcast, [13] which contains episodes titled “It’s Not Climate Denial, It’s White Supremacy,” “The Case for Intersectional Climate Coverage,” and “Oilgarchy + the Real F*ckbois of Fossil Fuel.” [14]
Vote-Climate has a news clipping service which provides quotations without further context, including: “We have seen in northern Minnesota, yes, some of the fastest-changing winter conditions in the country,” [15] and “[t]he news for moose is not good across the country’s northern tier and in some parts of Canada. A recent and rapid decline of moose populations in many states may be linked to climate change.” [16]
Vote-Climate urges its readers to petition Congress, [17] participate in organizations that lobby for more weather-dependent sources of energy in Minnesota, such as Fresh Energy; [18] oppose energy pipelines, such as the MN350 campaign to prevent a pipeline in northern Minnesota; [19] and join environmentalist organizations such as Climate Generation/Will Steger Foundation. [20]
Leadership
Jean Ross is the president of Vote-Climate. She studied art and design at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and University of Minnesota. [21] On March 1, 2021, Ross signed on to an environmentalist petition in her capacity as president of Vote-Climate that urged President Joe Biden to halt the Minnesota Line 3 oil sands pipeline. [22]