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The industry is facing mounting pressure both from environmentalists concerned about the dangers posed by nuclear power plants, and from dropping energy prices driven by fracking and new energy sources. This closure is part of a national trend for nuclear power, as plants in Pennsylvania and Illinois also close ahead of schedule, and another estimated fifteen to twenty plants are likely to close early over the next ten years. This month, Massachusetts closed their last nuclear power plant in Plymouth. Of the 99 reactors online in the US in 2016, only one had been built since 1996 and it looks unlikely that more will be built. Overall, nuclear power has been on the decline for a number of years. See if Community Solar is available in your area and schedule an appointment. See how you can help Fight Climate Change locally by joining a Community Solar Farm. The conditions are right, and the candidates are prioritizing it for the first time, so it’s more crucial than ever to get out and vote. With a tight deadline to make some drastic changes, this election cycle is the time to make sure climate change is the priority. There also appears to be a demographic shift from last election cycle, with groups that see climate change as a major issue making up a larger share of the voter pool for 2020 than ever before. Voter activism around climate change has prompted many of the Democratic candidates to issue detailed proposals as part of their platform.
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This appears to have activated many states and individuals to take stronger action independently. There has been a lot of lost ground for environmental protection and climate change at the federal level over the last few years. Wildfires in California, droughts wiping out crops, and unusual weather patterns across the country have turned climate change from a distant concern to a pressing worry we need to address now. Besides press coverage, more and more people are also seeing climate change beginning to impact them directly. Movements like Fridays for Future (led by school-children) and proposals like the Green New Deal have kept our attention on the issue. The next four years are almost half of that time, and if a president gets two terms that effectively makes climate change a one-president issue. The IPCC report recently gave us a deadline of 2030 to drastically reduce emissions if we want to avoid catastrophic results. For one thing, there have been a lot of news stories that put climate change front and center. There are several factors that might be causing voters to put their focus on the environment. Even Al Gore, the well-known climate activist, didn’t have climate change as his main campaign issue, and climate change was not discussed at all during the 2016 presidential debates. There are 23 Democratic candidates running for President in 2020 so far, and for the first time, climate change appears to be a main topic voters want to hear about.