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Poll: Americans Feel Electeds Serve Big Interests Over “People Like Me”

The Washington Post reported Iast April that “money in politics is unexpectedly a rising issue in the 2016 campaign.” Every Voice has a blog where it is keeping track of what all the candidates have said about the issue—from the Sanders, Cruz, Carson, and Kasich campaigns past, through the Trump and Clinton campaigns present. It’s a long … Read more

Weekend Reading 2/12/16

Anna One appeal for voters (albeit different voters) that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders seem to share is that they don’t (or claim not to) have pollsters. The idea is: You get what you get (or in Trump’s case, “No one tells me what to say”). The idea is that poll numbers aren’t going to … Read more

Poll: African-Americans Ahead on Climate Change

It’s the same old song and dance. Whenever and wherever a climate policy solution is proposed, the fossil fuel industry and its allies and front groups target people of color and low-income families with scary messages about energy costs. They have been singing the same tune to rural communities and working class families in Washington and … Read more

Latino Voters, Environmentalists at Heart

Editor’s note July 2016: It’s Latino Conservation Week, and to celebrate, we’re re-posting this favorite article from last year. Did you know that fully 74 percent of Latino Americans said setting national standards to prevent global warming and climate change is extremely important to them? Impressive numbers. Read on for more… Most American Latinos might not fit the typical … Read more

3 Climate Messages That Win

Poll after poll tells us that majorities of Americans support climate and energy solutions. But neither the talking heads on TV nor our elected officials have kept pace with public opinion—or with scientific urgency.

Why? One major factor is that the fossil fuel industry is actively stalling our progress, spending millions to influence elections, lobby decision-makers, and hammer Americans with messages designed to mislead, cast doubt, distract, and polarize.

Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions (along with Sightline and a team of messaging experts) has retested and updated the powerful climate change narrative first developed in 2012 that informed high-profile climate communications from the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency to 350.org and state and local leaders across the US.

It’s a clear, compelling narrative that cuts through these coal and oil industry tactics and frames global warming and energy solutions on our terms, not theirs. (Climate blogger Joe Romm hailed it a “must-read” for climate communicators.)

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Weekend Reading 1/23/15

Anna

This was news to me (the German history, not the “old as love itself” part). And fascinating: “although same-sex love is as old as love itself, the public discourse around it, and the political movement to win rights for it, arose in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant’s response to Obama’s SOTU speech: Where was he when it mattered?

Recent polling found that most wealthy Americans believe “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.” As Charles M. Blow writes in the NYT, this impression is way off base, not to mention offensive and callous.

We’re Ready to Cut Climate Pollution

American Flag

Results hot off the presses from a Wall Street Journal / NBC poll show promising climate attitudes among American voters, most notably, solid support for the new Environmental Protection Agency proposal to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.

At a moment when President Obama’s approval numbers continue to “tank,” the WSJ called his climate and energy policy “a rare bright spot.” Indeed! Here are some top takeaways:

  • More than six in 10 of the 1,000 US respondents said action is needed against climate change
  • 67 percent say they strongly (37 percent) or somewhat (30 percent) support Obama’s rules to set limits on power plant emissions and just 29 percent say they oppose
  • 57 percent said they would favor a proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions even if it meant higher electricity bills (That figure is up 9 percentage points since October 2009 and the highest since WSJ/NBC began asking the question.)

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Latino Voters Oppose Coal Exports

New research released today by Latino Decisions and the Latino Policy Coalition finds that Latino voters oppose new efforts to export US coal to China and Asia from the West Coast.

As Matt Barreto, co-founder of Latino Decisions and Associate Professor of Political Science and adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington reports, a clear majority of Latino voters rejects plans underway to expand coal exports through western cities and ports, by a margin of roughly 6-to-1.

As Latino Decisions senior analyst, Adrian Pantoja, points out, the findings affirm strong green attitudes about climate change and pollution among Latino voters revealed in national polling in the past few years, including a 2013 survey in which Latino Decisions found that 84 percent of Latinos favor the EPA setting more strict air pollution safeguards and 86 percent would support the President using his executive authority to set promote rules that limit carbon pollution. The results also reflect Latino voters’ attitudes about coal as a dirty fuel of the past, harmful to communities, food, kids, and health.

Barreto writes:

The findings from today’s poll release confirm Latinos general support for environmental protection and opposition to carbon pollution. In fact, this is the first poll to question Latinos on the specific topic of coal exports to China, and comes at a time when the US government grapples with coal export policy in the West.

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The Kids Are Alright

A few months back, Benenson Strategy Group and GS Strategy Group (a Democratic and a Republican firm working together) conducted a survey of young Americans for the League of Conservation Voters, to gauge attitudes about climate change, understanding of the problem, and readiness for leadership and policy solutions.

The finding: Young voters of both parties want to see action on climate change and will support leaders willing to take steps to address that threat.

Yep. A hefty majority of voters 18 to 35 understand the threat of climate change and already see the harmful effects of it, or expect to in their lifetime (65 percent). A full two-thirds say climate change needs to be addressed, while just 27 percent say climate change is a natural event that humans can’t affect, and a meager 3 percent deny it’s happening.

These numbers are slightly stronger, but not wildly different from the general population (i.e. surveys that include all us old people), though the share who flat out deny  can be as high as a quarter in some general population polls.

What’s most encouraging is young Americans’ eagerness for leadership and rejection of the denial game.

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Are Americans Talking about Global Warming?

All I can say is, my Facebook friends are not behaving like average Americans. My closest circles of “real world” friends and family really aren’t either. I already knew that! I mean, every other post I see on social media is about climate change and the people I choose to hang out with are the types who talk about big, serious issues fairly often too. I knew we were not the norm. But these new public opinion numbers from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication are still surprising—and sobering.

Americans are talking about climate change even less than I’d thought:

  • Only one in three Americans say they discuss global warming at least occasionally with friends or family, up 4 percentage points since September 2012, but down 8 points since November 2008. A mere 4 percent report talking about it “often” and twenty-eight percent say they talk about it “occasionally.” That means 67 percent talk about climate “rarely” or “never.”
  • Few Americans (less than 8 percent) communicated publicly about global warming in the past 12 months (e.g., online or in the media). In fact, only 7 percent say they shared information about global warming on Facebook or Twitter. Only 18 percent of “the Alarmed” (the most concerned of Yale’s Six Americas population segments) say they’ve posted about global warming on Facebook or Twitter.

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