Last Monday afternoon I was busy planning a Sustainability Workshop for this week when the text on my computer screen started swirling. Oh, no, I thought, the start of an incredibly busy week (and one where I’m solo-parenting too) is the VERY worst time to have a migraine. Normally I can contain the worst of the symptoms with a bar of chocolate, but when I’m really stressed this doesn’t work and I’m in for a couple of days of waves of debilitating nausea. This was one of those times.

Why was I so stressed? Because almost every political pundit was telling me Kamala Harris had the US Election in the bag but I knew in my gut Donald Trump was going to win. I have been a candidate in seven competitive local elections, winning six, have enjoyed two uncompetitive general election candidacies, and have managed several other elections (with, er, mixed results), so I have a bit of a spidey sense when it comes to what winning or losing feels like. Fundamentally, in 2016 and 2020, Trump way over-performed in the actual elections compared to the polls; this time the polls were tied which suggested he would have a comfortable lead. Scores of pundits claimed that somehow the polls had now overcompensated for past errors, or that there was a surge in women voting Harris, or the planets were in a certain alignment, or whatever, but nobody was producing any hard evidence. Even though I really wanted to believe these opinions, to me they just sounded exactly like what people say when they are losing.

In all the analysis of why Trump won, few people fully grasp that we all make decisions on gut instinct rather than rational arguments, not least in casting our votes. Only a tiny proportion of people (like me) pay daily attention to politics so ‘cut through’ is essential. Given his 40-50 years of celebrity, Trump has almost 100% name recognition, which I can tell you from recent bitter experience is extremely difficult to beat with a lesser known candidate, no matter how good they are. Here in the UK, political pundits largely thought Boris Johnson would make a terrible Prime Minister, but the general public knew him as that chubby guy with the messy hair who cracked funny jokes, spouting Latin at random, and he swept to victory in 2019. Pious Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, despite doing unexpectedly well against dour Theresa May just two years before, wilted before Johnson’s high power charisma.

Anyway, the dust has settled, Trump won easily, my nausea has gone, so where are we now in terms of Sustainability? Not in a good place, admittedly, but there are solid reasons not to fall into complete despondency.

• It will soon be over. There are (somewhat hysterical) fears Trump may try to overturn the constitutional two term limit on US Presidents, but even if he wanted/managed to wrangle this, his age would almost certainly limit him to four years. I don’t fear the wannabe Trumplets – several have tried to copy the blueprint but were swept aside in the primaries. Think about what happened to UKIP without Nigel Farage? Only The Donald is The Donald.
• We have survived Trump before. Remember Trump in 2016, wearing a coal miner’s helmet and miming digging at a campaign rally? The revival of the US coal industry never happened. While Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement last time, the US rejoined later. And despite a lack of federal Government support 2016-2020, major states, cities and corporations continued to follow Paris trajectories to some extent. Even redder-than-red Republican Texas, home of the US oil industry, is now the biggest producer of renewable energy in the US. Will Trump really pull Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act green stimulus measures when they are starting to show results in red states?
• Last time the rest of the world ploughed on with climate action and the US is not immune to global economic and legislative pressures. For example: the global motor industry is reeling from Chinese electric vehicles stealing a march while the traditional manufacturers tip-toed towards electrification. EU legislation will continue to favour low carbon imports. This time, Trump has promised tariffs, but some tides are impossible to turn and he risks a return to the soaring inflation that did for the Democrat regime.
• Elon Musk. Trump owes Musk big time and Musk will pressurise Trump to maintain pro-EV and, possibly, pro-climate policies – and Trump has already said he now likes EVs “because of Elon”. More tenuously, Jeff Bezos may also think he is owed a favour given his refusal to let the Washington Post endorse Kamala Harris, and Bezos self-identifies as an eco-warrior. Will the greener tech bros sway the notoriously transactional Trump? Stranger things have happened.

Anyway, we are where we are. Despair, or delaying this year’s COP meeting (starting today) as some have suggested, just slows climate action. The targets of holding warming to 1.5°C or 2°C are not binary win/lose – every tonne of carbon we avoid emitting or extract from the atmosphere is a teensie bit less warming, and the sooner we make those cuts the better. It all counts.

Hard as it is sometimes, I try to reframe setbacks as a kick up the backside. Despite my caveats above, Trump is a setback, and it looks like we’ve got to work twice as hard and twice as smart as before. Let’s do it!