Vote Climate
By Alex Lee and Graham Zimmerman
We are no strangers to navigating unknown terrains. Graham Zimmerman is a professional alpinist who has spent years in pursuit of first ascents. Alex Lee is a ski mountaineer and environmental philosopher who has spent years researching environmental change. From the creaking of thin ice underfoot, to the subtle shifts in the sky signaling an approaching storm, Graham’s pursuit of the vertical world necessitates careful and methodical decision making. Alex studies moral obligations, climate, and conservation–he finds a light for navigating through the intersection of science, policy, and values in exploring mountain spines and snowy couloirs near his home in Alaska.
We both recognize how attention to detail and decisive actions keep us safe, alive, and moving forward. There is little room for complacency when traveling in high mountains, avalanche terrain, remote corners of the world, and steep alpine ground, where small changes, precise movement, and little decisions together make the difference between danger and security. These same instincts drive our fight against climate change.
This summer was the hottest our country has ever experienced.
The climate crisis is no longer an abstract, distant threat—it’s here, now, in our own backyards. As temperatures rise, so do the stakes. Yet, just as in the mountains, it’s easy to become desensitized to danger. When catastrophe becomes routine, we start to believe it’s normal. But, just as a small misstep in the alpine can have fatal consequences, ignoring increasing signs of climate change is a mistake we cannot afford.
The fact is that climate change is scary, but it is also simple, and solvable. This years’ election is the time to get off the couch, face the problem, recognize the solution, and move from complacency to action.
We don’t need to say more about fires in the West or the upwards of 15,000 Americans that die from wildfire smoke every year. We don’t need to tell you about floods in the Northeast, hurricanes in the Gulf, persistent drought, mosquito and tick borne illness, species loss, or sea level rise. We don’t need to tell you about the 270 billion tonnes of ice Greenland has lost every year for the past 20 years. These facts of climate change should be shocking, but it’s far from a surprise to see climate catastrophe grab headlines on any given day. When something extreme becomes commonplace, we all too easily become lulled into the false sense of security of a frog in water slowly boiling.
The same lull takes hold in politics. Many of us have already forgotten politicians just a couple of weeks ago spouting claims of immigrants in Ohio eating stolen cats (…hard to keep track behind comments about Hannibal Lecter and magnets, to say the absolute very least). Just like extreme weather events or record shattering heat, extreme rhetoric also hides in its repetition. With enough exposure, the common becomes boring and fades into the backdrop of our news feed. None of this should be seen as normal. Just like in the outdoors, carelessness means danger.
Lessons from the mountains tell us not to be the frog, but also teach us what we can do if we find ourselves in hot water – principled decision making. Practice, train, buildup terrain choice and difficulty slowly, and have a plan. It’s nearly impossible to make a perfect decision in a crisis. Instead, we can reflect on our ethics and develop a heuristic to use when a sticky situation comes around.
Back in 2016, Graham traveled to the Atacama Desert to support a scientific expedition to climb Peak Llullaillaco (22,110′), a volcano that rises above the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar region on the planet. It wasn’t just an adventure, but an experience that profoundly shaped how Graham views the intersection of nature and human resilience. Near the summit is the highest archaeological site in the world – a testament to what humans are capable of in the most extreme environments. But what really stuck with him was the work his team was taking on to leverage the environmental conditions for planetary research. Investigating terraforming in such dry landscape gives insight into how we can help life thrive in extreme environments, a skill that may become crucial as our climate changes.
That expedition reminded Graham of what is at stake in the fight for climate action – it’s not enough to enjoy these wild places. We must also act as stewards of the natural world, inspiring others to protect the very environments that shape our adventures and our lives. 175 million Americans annually take part in outdoor recreation. Our community has the power to effect change.
Good decision-making today shapes the future. It’s up to us to ensure it’s a future we want to live in. We will hit 1.5 degree c of warming in the next decade or so. According to current research, in order to limit impacts there, we need to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 – the next president will leave office in 2029. By taking collective action we can ensure that the places we love — and the communities that depend on them — continue to thrive and be livable for generations to come.
When it comes to climate, there is a dangerous trend of overcomplicating the issue or framing solutions as far off pipe dreams. Neither is true.
Climate change is simple. Carbon Dioxide is very good at letting light into the atmosphere from the sun, but also very good at reflecting heat back to the surface of the earth. In less than 30 words, that is the greenhouse effect, a process that has been well understood for more than 125 years and uncontroversial in the scientific community. CO2 is like a transparent down jacket, light gets in, heat gets trapped. Renewable energy takes down out of the jacket. So, burn less carbon, get less warming.
Stewardship, care, and climate concern encapsulate a set of principles we can take to the polls. Climate change has become boring, disaster has become boring, political extremism has become boring – we know what’s happening, we expect it, but if we don’t fall back on those principles now, avalanche.
The good news is climate change is solvable. We don’t need to do less or renounce modernity. Instead, we just need to update our infrastructure. Before we ever burned fossil fuels, Yankee whalers nearly hunted cetaceans to extinction to run streetlights in New York City, before that we burned wood. We have changed our energy system before, and did so rapidly, we can do it again. Luckily, solar power is now cheaper than oil and gas and utility companies are quietly making the transition for us, even in deep red states. The cost of solar has plummeted nearly 85% in the past fifteen years, and together with wind, solar power is expected to outpace coal next year as the largest source of global electric generation.
This is the time to lean into our energy transition. We can do this most effectively through systemic change. We get that by voting in an ethic of care. The Inflation Reduction Act and Paris Climate Agreement are the largest climate bill and most significant international climate accord ever passed respectively. The Biden Administration has enacted both, and the Trump administration removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and blocked many of the provisions passed later in the IRA.
As folks deeply invested in landscapes – it is our responsibility to take action on climate – the first step, and a very important step, is to vote. Taking on climate change is a team sport; we are roped together. Together we can make a difference.
Mountains make us feel small, elections do too. Mountains also teach us that even small things can have a big impact, the same is true in elections. Simple solutions to big problems come from good policy, good policy comes from willing policy makers, we get those policymakers by voting. This is a generational opportunity. It might be boring, but that’s the good news. Just vote.
About the Authors:
As a professional climber, Graham Zimmerman is one of the most acclaimed alpinists of his generation. After graduating in 2007 with a degree in geography, he focused on alpinism, a pursuit that has taken him on expeditions from Alaska to Patagonia to Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan and all over the lower 48 and Canada. His remarkable ascents have earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious Piolet d’Or, the highest honor in alpine climbing.
Graham is committed to using his platform for positive change and holds leadership roles in various nonprofits and outdoor organizations, including Protect Our Winters and Dirtroad Organizing. His experiences and stories are captured in his award-winning memoir, A Fine Line, published by Mountaineers Books. He resides in Bend, OR, with his wife, Shannon, and their dogs, Pebble and Iggy.
Alex Lee, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Liberal Studies Programs at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder. His work explores environmental problem solving and the nature of moral obligations to the non-human world.
Alex co-hosts the climate ethics podcast ‘A Hostile Climate,’ and works with Protect Our Winters as Captain of the POW Science Alliance, connecting climate researchers with climate action. Alex is also a writer, skier, mountaineer, and former guide with more than 15 years of experience in high mountains around Alaska, the American West, and beyond. Alex writes about why we should protect nature, politics, skiing, mountains, fish, and sometimes his two-year old daughter.
