North Carolinians gather en masse outside the North Carolina General Assembly to demonstrate in support of progressive policies. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
If you’re like most people, you’re probably breathing a heavy sigh of relief at the conclusion of the 2024 election season. If nothing else, an end to the pins-and-needles stress and the constant blitz of electronic ads and mailers will be something that everyone will celebrate.
Indeed, just about every person of every belief system can be forgiven if they yearn for a few moments of normalcy in which, at least for a brief while, politics takes backseat to life’s ordinary pursuits.
And yet, the hard truth is that little will actually be resolved by this week’s outcomes. While it obviously matters a great deal who will control the levers of political power at all levels, the challenges confronting our state, nation and planet, along with the duty of caring and thinking people to stay active and engaged, will remain.
Much as we all might wish that a new chief executive would be able to wave a magic wand and make all manner of societal problems disappear, this is obviously a fantasy.
In truth, the election’s conclusion is the beginning of a new period of action in which the policy challenges that the candidates have debated so fiercely over the last several months must now be addressed. Come January (and maybe even sooner), elected officials in Washington and Raleigh will need to grapple with dozens of huge, even existential issues.
Topping the list, of course, is the rapidly worsening global climate emergency.
As Hurricane Helene reminded North Carolinians yet again a few weeks ago in terrifying fashion, there is no place to hide from climate change; extreme weather and its often-devastating impacts will impact everyone in one way or another in the years ahead.
And notwithstanding the nonsense mouthed by those who claim the concept of human-induced global warming is some kind of hoax (as an aside, these deniers never explain why thousands of scientists – many of whom themselves enjoy driving gas guzzling vehicles, eating beef, and keeping their own homes and labs well-air conditioned — would want to perpetrate such a hoax), the need for urgent policy action isn’t going anywhere.
Indeed, it’s a bitterly ironic aspect of this debate that one of the top concerns of so many climate change deniers – mass human migration — is also one of its most visible and worrisome impacts.
As the planet warms, the human population grows and expanding swaths of once habitable land are lost to rising oceans and drought and desertification, the pressure on people to seek refuge and new homelands will only increase.
And so it is that, regardless of who assumes high office in 2025, the urgent need for action will remain.
And given the fact that government at the federal level promises to remain closely divided in the near term, the policy battles – be they over efforts to build on the current administration’s commitment to combating climate change or new proposals to abandon them – will be all-hands-on-deck affairs.
The same will be true with respect to a raft of other unresolved policy issues. The list includes:
- The ongoing global assault on freedom and democracy in which authoritarian dictators and regimes are waging wars of aggression and undermining human freedom
- The rapid and unjust accumulation of wealth by a handful of global billionaires – some of whom possess more power and influence than entire nations
- The grinding poverty that still afflicts huge shares of the U.S. and global populations
- The continuing effort by forces of the political right to roll back decades of progress in matters of human rights and racial, ethnic and gender equality
- The need to expand and reap the benefits (and limit the negative impacts) of technological advances like artificial intelligence
- The nation’s aging population and its implications for the economy, health care, and Social Security
- The debate over reproductive freedom and whether the nation will continue to try and turn back the clock
- The ongoing battle to preserve public education and the separation of church and state as core components of American life
In short, as overwhelming as it may often seem, one of the responsibilities that comes with living in the present era is the need to be an engaged citizen. Americans of today may not have to make the herculean sacrifices of surviving civil and world wars like their forebears, and many millions of us may enjoy creature comforts and conveniences our ancestors could have scarcely imagined. But if we hope to leave a world to those who follow that holds any resemblance to the one that the fortunate among us enjoy now, we cannot leave it to the invisible hand.
Elections are of enormous importance, but the task of maintaining a working democracy in the 21st Century is a 365-day-a-year job. Tomorrow, the work begins anew.