Environmental Polling Roundup – July 21, 2023
HEADLINES
Quinnipiac University – Three in five Americans say that extreme weather is related to climate change; most expect climate change to have a “significant negative effect” on the world in their lifetimes [Website, Release]
Yahoo + YouGov – Most American say that climate change is contributing to the Southwest heat wave, and a growing share say that climate change has made things worse in their lives [Article, Crosstabs]
Navigator – Voters continue to support the Inflation Reduction Act by wide margins, and most find it credible that the bill will significantly lower household energy costs [Website, Report, Topline]
[CO, GA, MI, & PA] Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) – Amid Farm Bill negotiations, voters in key states are more likely to support political candidates who want to help farmers to adapt to extreme weather and to be part of the solution to climate change [Website, National Crosstabs, Key States Topline]
Yale + University of Cincinnati – Messaging about the harms of fossil fuels increases support for renewable energy, with or without appeals to morality and ethics [Article]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Voters believe that energy prices and carbon emissions can be reduced at the same time. Navigator finds that just over half of voters believe that the Inflation Reduction Act will lower the average family’s energy costs while reducing carbon pollution. Polling about the clean energy transition generally finds that Americans are wary that it will make their energy bills more expensive, so this is an encouraging finding that shows that the public does believe it’s possible to reduce emissions and energy costs at the same time. Convincing the public that clean energy will save them money is imperative for building support for the energy transition, so clean energy advocates should emphasize lowering costs and use specific estimates where possible. The Navigator poll, for example, stated that the Inflation Reduction Act will save the average family $1,000 per year in energy costs while reducing carbon pollution by 40%.
- We’re building some traction in convincing Americans about the current, personal impacts of climate change. Yahoo and YouGov find that a rising share of Americans say that climate change has had a negative impact on their lives, and polls released this week also find that Americans believe that climate change is contributing to extreme weather generally and to specific events like the heat wave in the Southwest. The more that advocates can drive home the connection between climate change and the weather – especially extreme heat, which is the most commonly cited type of extreme weather that Americans experience and the type of extreme weather that is most intuitively linked to climate change – the more we can convince the public that the climate crisis is a here-and-now problem.
GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
- [Extreme Weather + Climate Change] 60% of Americans say that extreme weather events in the United States over the last few years are related to climate change [Quinnipiac]
- [Extreme Weather + Climate Change] 55% of Americans recognize that climate change is contributing to extreme weather events such as the heat wave across the Southwest United States [Yahoo + YouGov]
- [Climate Change] 67% of Americans say they’re concerned about climate change, including 42% who are “very” concerned [Quinnipiac]
- [Climate Change] 58% of Americans recognize that human activity is causing climate change [Yahoo + YouGov]
- [Climate Change] 56% of Americans say that climate change is an established scientific fact [Yahoo + YouGov]
- [Climate Change] 55% of Americans believe that climate change will have a significant negative effect on the world in their lifetime [Quinnipiac]
- [Inflation Reduction Act] 66% of voters support the Inflation Reduction Act after reading a brief, one-sentence description of it [Navigator]
- [Inflation Reduction Act] 73% of voters support the Inflation Reduction Act’s policies to lower energy costs for the average family by $1,000 a year and reduce carbon pollution by 40% [Navigator]
- [Inflation Reduction Act] 64% of voters support the Inflation Reduction Act’s policies to provide tax credits to expand clean energy production like solar and wind power [Navigator]
- [Issue Priority] More Americans name climate change and the environment as the single “most important issue” to them than any other issue aside from inflation/prices, health care, and the economy/jobs [The Economist + YouGov]
FULL ROUNDUP
Quinnipiac University – Three in five Americans say that extreme weather is related to climate change; most expect climate change to have a “significant negative effect” on the world in their lifetimes [Website, Release]
Quinnipiac finds that clear majorities of Americans are concerned about climate change, believe that it is connected to recent extreme weather events in the United States, and expect it to have a serious negative impact on the world.
Two in three Americans say that they’re concerned about climate change. Quinnipiac finds that 67% of Americans are at least “somewhat” concerned about climate change, including two in five (42%) who are “very” concerned about the issue. However, the topic has now become so politically polarized that self-identified Democrats (76%) are more than eight times as likely as self-identified Republicans (9%) to say that they’re “very concerned” about climate change.
Americans generally recognize that climate change is contributing to extreme weather events. The poll finds that three in five Americans (60%) believe that extreme weather events in the United States over the past few years are related to climate change, compared to only about one-third (34%) who believe that these events are unrelated to climate change. Research by Yale and George Mason has found that Americans’ recognition of the link between climate change and extreme weather has been trending upward in recent years.
Quinnipiac further finds that nearly half of Americans (46%) worry that they or their family will be affected by an extreme weather event. Democrats (72% worried) are far more likely to express this concern than Republicans (19%), demonstrating how even the concept of extreme weather has become polarized amid the political debate about climate change.
Most Americans anticipate a “significant negative effect” from climate change. The majority of Americans (55%) believe that climate change will have a significant negative effect on the world in their lifetimes, including roughly two-thirds of younger Americans aged 18-34 (66%).
Yahoo + YouGov – Most American say that climate change is contributing to the Southwest heat wave, and a growing share say that climate change has made things worse in their lives [Article, Crosstabs]
Yahoo and YouGov find that majorities of Americans link climate change to extreme weather in the U.S., have noticed more extreme weather in their local area, and believe that climate change is being caused by human activity. Additionally, by comparing these recent results to their previous polling, Yahoo and YouGov find that a rising percentage of Americans say that they’ve been negatively impacted by climate change in their own lives.
Most Americans recognize the human causes of climate change. Americans are nearly three times more likely to agree (58%) than disagree (20%) that “human activity is causing climate change.” Most also agree that climate change “is an established scientific fact” (56%).
Majorities report more extreme weather in their area and say that climate change is contributing to extreme weather events like the Southwest heat wave. Nearly three in five Americans (57%) say that they’ve noticed more extreme weather events such as heat waves, fires, and storms where they live. Importantly, most Americans also see a connection between this type of extreme weather and climate change – a finding that is consistent with the new Quinnipiac polling.
When provided with the example of the heat wave across the Southwest U.S., Americans are about twice as likely to agree (55%) than disagree (28%) that climate change is a contributing cause.
A growing percentage of Americans say that climate change has made their own lives worse, and more expect to feel negative impacts in the future. Yahoo and YouGov find that just over one in three Americans (34%) say that climate change has made things worse in their lives, a seven-point increase since Yahoo and YouGov previously asked this question in October 2021 (27%).
Further, nearly half of Americans (47%) expect climate change to make things worse in their lives in the future – a five-point increase from October 2021 (42%).
Navigator – Voters continue to support the Inflation Reduction Act by wide margins, and most find it credible that the bill will significantly lower household energy costs [Website, Report, Topline]
Navigator finds that the substance of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), including provisions related to clean energy, remains overwhelmingly popular nearly a year after the bill’s passage.
When prompted with a one-sentence description of the legislation (“Biden and Democrats’ legislation that was passed by Congress is called the Inflation Reduction Act, which will give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices, bring down health insurance premiums, and invest in clean energy like wind and solar power”), voters support the the Inflation Reduction Act by a nearly three-to-one margin (66% support / 23% oppose).
Further, despite the poll identifying it as a bill passed by President Biden and Democrats, Republican voters are close to evenly split in their support (40% support / 44% oppose).
These findings are consistent with previous polling on the bill, which has consistently shown high support for the IRA when Americans are provided with basic information about it.
Most voters also say that the Inflation Reduction Act will help families like theirs. After being provided with a short description of the bill, 52% of voters – including nearly two-thirds of Black (64%) and Hispanic voters (65%) – say that the legislation “will help families like mine.”
The IRA’s clean energy provisions continue to earn overwhelming support. Navigator tested two provisions of the IRA that directly relate to climate change and clean energy, and finds wide margins of support for each:
- Lowering energy costs by $1,000 per year for the average family and reducing carbon pollution by 40% (73% support / 14% oppose, including 52% “strong” support)
- Providing tax credits to expand clean energy production like solar and wind power (64% support / 23% oppose, including 38% “strong” support)
The IRA’s clean energy provisions are also credible, with voters believing that we can reduce household energy costs and carbon emissions at the same time. While half of the poll’s respondents were provided with a list of IRA provisions and asked whether they support or oppose each one, the other half of respondents were provided with the same list of provisions and asked whether the IRA accomplishes each one. By asking what the IRA specifically does, these questions allow us to gauge which IRA policies sound the most credible – either because people have explicitly heard about a policy or because it intuitively seems like something the IRA could do.
Encouragingly, the poll finds that most voters believe that the IRA’s climate and clean energy provisions are feasible:
- 75% believe that the IRA “definitely” or “probably” will provide tax credits to expand clean energy production like solar and wind power
- 54% believe that the IRA “definitely” or “probably” will lower energy costs by $1,000 per year for the average family and reduce reduces carbon pollution by 40%
Voters’ inclination to believe that the IRA will both lower energy costs for the average family and significantly cut carbon pollution is especially noteworthy, as Americans tend to be pessimistic that shifting to clean energy will save them money as consumers. Pew recently found, for example, that Americans are slightly more likely to believe that shifting to renewable energy sources will raise their household energy costs (42%) than reduce their household energy costs (37%).
However, this Navigator poll shows that voters believe it’s possible to cut energy costs and carbon pollution at the same time. The specificity that the poll used, by referring to a particular piece of legislation and providing precise figures in terms of household cost savings and carbon emissions reductions, may help to make the claim more credible. Moving forward, the environmental movement would benefit from more research into how to make our arguments about the cost savings of clean energy more intuitive and believable to the public.
[CO, GA, MI, & PA] Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) – Amid Farm Bill negotiations, voters in key states are more likely to support political candidates who want to help farmers to adapt to extreme weather and to be part of the solution to climate change [Website, National Crosstabs, Topline]
UCS recently surveyed Americans nationwide and voters in key states (CO, GA, MI, & PA) about the Farm Bill.
They find that, at the national level, Americans overwhelmingly support proposals to help farmers adapt to extreme weather events and to provide better workplace protections for agricultural workers:
- 80% support programs that help farmers proactively adapt and protect their land and crops against losses from flooding and drought rather than waiting and paying for losses after the fact
- 79% support more and better workplace protections for essential workers in the farming and food industries
In their state-level polling, UCS asked more directly about the climate aspects of the Farm Bill and find that there is clear political upside for candidates in key states to support policies for climate adaptation and climate-friendly agriculture.
When asked whether they would be more or less likely to support a candidate for public office who “proposed ways to help farmers adapt to extreme weather and be part of the solution to climate change,” clear majorities of voters in each state surveyed say that they would be more likely to support such a candidate:
- Pennsylvania – 70% more likely / 7% less likely
- Colorado – 69% more likely / 7% less likely
- Georgia – 66% more likely / 8% less likely
- Michigan – 65% more likely / 8% less likely
Yale + University of Cincinnati – Messaging about the harms of fossil fuels increases support for renewable energy, with or without appeals to morality and ethics [Article]
An experiment conducted by researchers at Yale and the University of Cincinnati finds that messaging about the harms of fossil fuels is effective at persuading people to support renewable energy.
Additionally, they find that specifically emphasizing morality (e.g., saying that it’s unethical to hurt innocent people with pollution) has no clear impact on the persuasiveness of messaging about the harms of fossil fuels.
Pulling from the article linked above, with emphasis added in bold:
“Some research has argued that morality is a primary source of people’s opinions on a wide variety of issues… For example, a message might be more persuasive if it argues that we should transition to renewable energy because fossil fuels are unethical due to pollution harming innocent people (violating a common moral principle)… Similarly, a message could argue that fossil fuels are unethical because the pollution contaminates the cleanliness of the natural environment – activating another key ‘moral foundation’ of purity.
Here, we report findings from a recent experiment testing whether persuasive effects are enhanced by explicitly emphasizing the moral and ethical aspects of different energy sources… [O]ur study tested the effect of explicitly calling out those ethical implications, compared to only describing the negative impacts of fossil fuel use without an explicit statement about morals and ethics.
Overall, we found that explicitly emphasizing the moral aspects of the issue did not provide a boost in either persuasiveness or message durability. Put simply, we found that the messages describing the negative effects of fossil fuels and advantages of clean energy already had strong and durable effects and nothing was gained by adding an explicit claim about ethics. While this is only one study, the findings suggest that direct statements about the morality or immorality of different energy sources do not necessarily enhance the persuasiveness of messages.
In our study, research participants were randomly assigned to watch one of five animated videos. Two non-moralized videos explained how fossil fuels can harm human health and the environment, respectively. Two “moralized” videos contained the same information but also included additional arguments about why this means using fossil fuels is inherently immoral, because doing so harms innocent people or contaminates the purity of nature, respectively… The fifth video, which provided information about an unrelated topic, provided the control (baseline) condition.
We found that all four messages were effective at changing beliefs about renewable energy and support for an energy transition. However, adding the specific moral claims (“this is unethical”) did not increase the persuasiveness of the message. Instead, all messages were similarly effective.”
Related Resources
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