Charlie Jane Anders

Because we are close to reaching climate benchmarks we can’t come back from

Future generations will look back on 2024 as the moment when the United States of America made a defining choice about climate change. This November, we’re either going to renew our commitment to fixing this mess we created or embrace denial and plunge the world into a nightmarish scenario.

Nobody is talking about it much, but this election feels especially important for a couple of reasons. First, we are dangerously close to reaching some climate benchmarks that we won't be able to come back from easily, if at all. And second, we now face daily brutal reminders about the impacts of climate change on our world. As Kamala Harris herself said, “Climate change is here and we must boldly and rapidly address it.”

The good news is the past few years have seen some real advances toward clean energy and green infrastructure. Tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act are helping make wind and solar power more affordable than nonrenewable energy sources, with the subsidies in the bill creating more jobs in the clean energy sector. But there’s much more work to be done—and I’m holding onto hope that President Harris will keep pushing a pro-climate agenda, based on her 90 percent record on climate votes, according to the League of Conservation Voters. That said, I hope she goes back to supporting a ban on fracking.

As a writer of speculative fiction, among other things, I think a lot about the future. And there’s a very bleak future scenario, where climate change brings worsening unrest and brutal wars over dwindling resources. We’re liable to see massive increases in the number of climate refugees trying to enter the United States and Western Europe. Even though these people will be responding to a crisis we did the most to engineer, I don’t imagine we will treat them with any degree of compassion or decency, based on recent events. The darkest timeline involves a vicious cycle, in which climate change leads to widespread devastation, which leads to chaos and human misery, which strengthens the grip of authoritarian leaders—who in turn plunge us deeper into climate chaos. This, unfortunately, does not feel far-fetched to me; it’s the world I fear may come to pass if we don’t act soon.

Many people primarily see the current election as a battle against toxic masculinity. But I see toxic masculinity as emblematic of how we treat our own natural habitat, and the arrogance with which we have wheeled our clumsy power. I trust Kamala Harris because I know she believes in the reality of both this unprecedented threat and our ability to do something about it.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster (August 2025), a novel about queer families and magical healing.