If you’re looking for ways to care for the environment, ‘tis the season in the U.S. as I write this for one of the most important things someone here can do—vote. In fact, if you were to only do one thing, it may be hard to top voting in its importance, especially per the amount of effort required. Additionally, because the U.S. has a large global influence and environmental impact, voting in the U.S. is particularly significant. And, in an aside, while no country is perfect, I do appreciate this ability currently in the U.S. to have some say in how it is governed.

Voting can affect the environment in many ways. In the U.S., the people we choose for congress to write our laws partly decide what environmental problems our country will address and how it will solve them. For example, to deal with air pollution, the U.S. congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970. Among other things, this law regulates emissions from power plants and other industries that are harmful to breathe, like particulates and lead. Also, the U.S. president affects the environment by influencing what laws are passed and by heading the federal agencies that carry them out. For example, the Clean Air Act partly leaves it to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to choose what pollutants to regulate and how to do so—decisions that are overseen by the president and the people he selects to run the EPA. Additionally, judges can affect the environment by deciding how environmental laws like the Clean Air Act should be interpreted and if they believe a government agency like the EPA is implementing them in legally correct ways. Not only at the federal level, but state and local governments can also affect the environment in similar ways as those above. 

While environmental problems can sometimes be complicated and involve competing interests, I think there is some good news: in theory at least, it seems to me caring for the environment should be compatible with a variety of political perspectives. For example, if you tend to be drawn to Republicans, perhaps some things you may value are consistent with taking care of the environment, such as:

• If you value personal responsibility, perhaps that is consistent with people generally being responsible for the costs of the pollution they create instead of leaving others to bear its costs.
• If you care about national security, climate change has been identified by the U.S. military as a threat to that (see this).
• If you are concerned by abortion, believing it is equivalent to a person dying, perhaps people dying due to air pollution or the consequences of climate change (such as increased famine) should be of concern as well. 
• If you care about using financial resources conservatively, perhaps using our limited natural resources in a similar manner is consistent with that.

Not only may taking care of the environment be compatible with diverse political perspectives, I think we probably need diverse views to come up with our best environmental solutions. As an example, in 1990, to deal with acid rain caused by power plants burning coal, George H.W. Bush worked with politicians from various perspectives to create an innovative cap-and-trade solution that was much cheaper than other potential options. In this case, because these different perspectives worked together, they achieved a successful solution instead of using less-ideal solutions or not dealing with the problem at all (for more on the story see this).

If you want to care for the environment, voting for people who support that is perhaps one of the most important things you can do. And if there aren’t candidates that support the environment that you like, consider encouraging things so there are some—we could probably use those varying perspectives to achieve the best solutions to our environmental problems.