Climate change has been one of the prominent voting issues of the 2020 presidential election. The topic has gotten a boost from huge protests across the country over the years.

According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, a majority of registered voters in the United States say climate change will be a very (42%) or somewhat (26%) important issue in making their decision about whom to vote for in the November 3 election.

This is the major reason why President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden stressed on their environmental priorities in mostly all their major campaign rallies.

While Biden declared climate change the “number one issue facing humanity” and boasted a $2 trillion plan for it, Trump recently shifted the blame to India along with China and Russia. Although the president aims to increase drilling for oil and gas and roll back further environmental protections.

Both the candidates have taken totally opposite sides regarding the Paris Climate Accord. While the Republican has committed to withdrawing from the Accord, the Democrat says he would immediately re-join the Paris climate agreement if elected. 

However, the key issue of climate change, which as per the reports by Yale and George Mason University, has become the 11th most important voting issue for registered voters, was not something to worry about until 1895. Global warming, specifically, ranked fifth on the list of liberal Democrats.

Global warming first started practically recognising in the US in 1895 with New Jersey becoming one of the fastest-warming states in the nation. The average temperature of the state climbed up to 2 degrees Celcius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit), double the average for the lower 48 states, Washington Post reports.

Over the past two decades, this temperature has emerged to be a critical threshold for global warming. 

According to the report ‘Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days’, which was published in 2019,  in less than 20 years, millions of people in the United States could be exposed to dangerous “off-the-charts” heat conditions of 127 degrees Fahrenheit or more. 

US “hotspots”, including Oregon, Colorado, Los Angeles and Michigan are only getting worse in the absence of a foolproof plan to combat climate change and slashing the emissions of the greenhouse gases fueling it.

The story doesn’t end here.

The country witnessed devastating floods in 2019, which prevented farmers from planting 14 million acres in crops. 

The same year, there were 50,477 wildfires compared with 58,083 wildfires in 2018, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). This year, the western US is seeing winters and wildfires at the same time with more than 90,000 people told to flee California just a few days ago.

As per NIFC, about 4.7 million acres were burned in 2019 while there were 8.8 million acres burned in 2018. Until now, 4.1 million acres have burned in 2020, making the California wildfires five of the six biggest fire in the state since 1932.

The country is also facing tropical cyclone formation at a record-breaking rate in the ongoing Atlantic hurricane season. With 28 tropical or subtropical cyclones, 2020 is the second most active season on record following the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

With more surprising weather conditions likely to turn people’s minds toward a changing planet, the presidential nominees will continue to compete with this crisis until the race’s bitter end.