Climate change: Voters will be hot under the collar by 2099

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/s-ccv102616.php

Public Release: 26-Oct-2016
Climate change: Voters will be hot under the collar by 2099
Harvard study of 1.5 billion votes is the first to project how climate change will impact democratic elections
Springer

By 2099 the nature of democratic politics could change in costly ways for politicians because of climate change, says Nick Obradovich of Harvard University in a paper in Springer's journal Climatic Change. Leveraging a century's worth of political science research, he predicts that voters' disgruntlement about the societal effects of climatic extremes and weather-related disasters they experience will translate into more frequent turnover of political parties elected in and out of office, and will keep politicians of especially warmer, poorer countries more on their toes than is currently the case.

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According to Obradovich, turnover directly related to politician performance is vital to a well-functioning democracy. He notes, however, that findings from the study indicate that democratic turnover might increase as a result of climatic events that are outside the control of individual politicians.

"Such exogenously driven political turnover may shorten democratic time horizons, inducing parties and their politicians to focus on short-run policies at the expense of important longer-run strategies," he warns. "Such altered political time horizons may have a particularly deleterious impact on climate mitigation, as the long-run benefits of mitigation are unlikely to be observed from one election to the next."

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