Environmental Polling Roundup – March 1, 2024
HEADLINES
Data for Progress – Voters overwhelmingly want stronger accountability for polluters, including compensation for damages to the environment and local communities; most disapprove of the court decision to block an investigation of environmental injustices in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” [Release, Report, Crosstabs]
LCV – In communications about President Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, voters are most swayed by messaging about health [Release]
[CO, LA, TX, & WY] National Wildlife Federation + Data for Progress – Voters widely support carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects in key states where they are being considered [Release, Report]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Voters across the political spectrum continue to want a tougher stance against corporate polluters. Even in today’s fractious political climate, Data for Progress finds that there is overwhelming, bipartisan agreement on the need for stronger accountability for companies that pollute our air and water. Large majorities of voters of all political affiliations support polluter accountability measures such as requirements for oil and gas companies to compensate for damages to the environment and local communities, and increased fines for oil and gas companies that repeatedly break local pollution rules. There is very little sympathy for corporate polluters from any section of the electorate, as voters are unified in wanting elected officials to take a tougher stance against these companies.
- Public health stands out as the strongest rationale for pausing methane gas export projects. This is the result of extensive message testing commissioned by LCV about President Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, which finds that the following message on the topic resonates above all others among Americans nationwide and among nearly every demographic subgroup: “President Biden just paused the development of new methane gas facilities because they would pump toxic pollution into the air, putting more people at risk for getting sick with illnesses like respiratory disease, heart disease and cancer.” (Note that the message uses the term “methane gas” rather than “natural gas,” as the public often misinterprets “natural” gas to be a clean source of energy.)
GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
- [Polluter Accountability] 86% of voters support enforcing increasingly higher fines on oil and gas companies that operate facilities that frequently break local pollution rules, including 89% of Democrats, 88% of independents, and 83% of Republicans [Data for Progress]
- [Polluter Accountability] 85% of voters support requiring oil and gas companies to compensate for the damage they may have caused to the environment or local communities, including 90% of Democrats, 85% of independents, and 80% of Republicans [Data for Progress]
- [Polluter Accountability] 76% of voters support permanently shutting down facilities that have been repeat offenders of illegal polluting and revoking their permits to operate in the state, including 85% of Democrats, 77% of independents, and 67% of Republicans [Data for Progress]
- [CDR] Large majorities of voters in Colorado (78%), Texas (78%), Louisiana (75%), and Wyoming (68%) support allowing carbon dioxide removal sites to be built in their state [NWF + Data for Progress]
FULL ROUNDUP
Data for Progress – Voters overwhelmingly want stronger accountability for polluters, including compensation for damages to the environment and local communities; most disapprove of the court decision to block an investigation of environmental injustices in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” [Release, Report, Crosstabs]
Polluter accountability is one of the topic areas where we tend to see the greatest bipartisan agreement in environmental polling, as this new report from Data for Progress affirms.
Overall, they find overwhelming majority support (76%+) among voters nationwide for each of the following measures to hold polluters accountable at the state level:
- Mandating automatic inspections of oil and gas facilities after an intentional emissions leakage is identified (87% support)
- Enforcing increasingly higher fines on oil and gas companies that operate facilities that frequently break local pollution rules (86%)
- Requiring oil and gas companies to compensate for the damage they may have caused to the environment or local communities (85%)
- Improving pollution monitoring at fence lines of facilities to better identify plants that are illegally polluting (84%)
- Prosecuting managers of facilities that have been repeat offenders of illegal polluting (79%)
- Permanently shutting down facilities that have been repeat offenders of illegal polluting and revoking their permits to operate in the state (76%)
Voters’ support for these polluter accountability measures is both intense and bipartisan. For each of the six measures tested, 45%+ of voters overall “strongly” support the proposal. Additionally, at least two-thirds of Republicans (67%+) support each one.
Support for tougher polluter accountability also importantly stands up to scrutiny. In a balanced debate on the topic where they saw the competing arguments below, voters overwhelmingly side more with an argument in favor of stronger accountability from state governments (65%) over an argument against it (25%):
- “When oil and gas companies operate near local communities, they expose residents to hazardous waste and harmful health effects. State governments should implement harsher penalties on these companies.” (65% agree more with this argument)
- “Pollution from oil and gas companies is a byproduct of doing business, but companies must still follow certain rules for their operations. State governments should not implement harsher penalties on these companies.” (25% agree more with this argument)
Majorities of Democrats (78%), independents (65%), and Republicans (52%) all side more with the argument about implementing harsher penalties for polluters.
The poll also explored voters’ reactions to the “affirmative defense” loophole in Texas, which allows companies to skirt liability for harmful pollution.
Poll respondents read the following description of Texas’s loophole: “In Texas, state law requires oil and gas companies to pay penalties when there is evidence that their facilities have caused irreparable damage and harm to the local environment and community in which they operate. However, these companies can avoid being penalized by claiming that the pollution their facilities may have caused was
‘unplanned and unavoidable.’”
When presented with the two competing arguments below about the “affirmative defense” loophole for polluters in Texas, voters overwhelmingly side more with an argument that it should be closed (74%) – including large majorities of Democrats (81%), independents (73%), and Republicans (68%):
- “Allowing oil and gas companies to avoid penalties for polluting the environment and local community is wrong and unjust. Texas should close this loophole and enforce penalties on companies with repeated offenses of illegal pollution.” (74% agree more with this argument)
- “Unplanned and unavoidable pollution from oil and gas companies should be expected when operating such facilities. Texas should not close this loophole and allow these companies to continue to operate without a penalty.” (16% agree more with this argument)
Data for Progress additionally finds that majorities of voters across the political spectrum oppose the federal court decision to shut down the investigation of civil rights violations in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.”
After reading the description of the issue below, voters disapprove of the judge’s decision by a two-to-one margin (27% approve / 56% disapprove).
“A federal judge in Louisiana recently blocked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from continuing their investigations into whether state agencies in Louisiana had violated the civil rights of residents in St. James Parish.
Their investigations were seeking to determine whether state agencies allowed oil and gas companies to discriminate against Black residents in this parish by permitting them to build their facilities primarily in historically Black communities for years.”
LCV – In communications about President Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, voters are most swayed by messaging about health [Memo]
In testing several potential arguments in favor of President Biden’s pause on pending LNG export projects, LCV finds that a message about health is the most effective overall and among nearly every major subgroup of the population.
Pulling from the memo linked above, with emphasis added in bold:
“In order to better understand the strongest and most compelling ways to communicate this decision to the public, LCV partnered with Blue Rose Research to test twelve messages in support of the action…
The study was designed as MaxDiff test – respondents are shown a matchup of messages from the battery and asked to pick the most and least impactful within the
match up. The process is iterated again and again throughout the combinations. Then, with appropriate tabulation, the design determines the relative rankings – which ones were most impactful to the electorate and which ones were least.
The results were clear: the most effective and convincing way to talk about this pause is in the context of the pollution risk methane gas facilities pose and the health consequences from them. While other frames are still useful, the pollution-focused message was chosen overall and by virtually all subgroups as the best message on the topic.
HEALTH MESSAGE: President Biden just paused the development of new methane gas facilities because they would pump toxic pollution into the air, putting more people at risk for getting sick with illnesses like respiratory
disease, heart disease and cancer.
That message was the top ranked overall with it being picked 58% of the time by respondents. It was the top among women (59%) and men (57%), the top among people under 30 (58%) and over 65 (58%) and the top among Black voters (57%), Hispanic voters (56%), white voters with a college degree (60%) and white voters
without a college degree (57%).
The 2nd and 3rd ranked messages, chosen 53% of the time for both, had similar characteristics. Like the top testing message, these each included an emphasis on the pollution-impacts of more methane gas production.
200 TONS MESSAGE: President Biden just paused the development of a new methane gas facility that would be one of the biggest carbon polluters in the country, spewing nearly 200 million tons of toxic pollution into our air each year.
CLIMATE GOALS MESSAGE: President Biden just paused the development of new methane gas facilities because they would make the climate crisis even worse and lock in fossil fuel pollution for decades to come, making it impossible to reach our climate goals of net zero emissions by mid-century.”
[CO, LA, TX, & WY] National Wildlife Federation + Data for Progress – Voters widely support carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects in key states where they are being considered, and see improved air quality as the clearest benefit of these projects [Release, Report]
We haven’t seen very much polling on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) specifically, but polling consistently shows that the public supports investments in technologies that can help to clean up carbon pollution – including CDR as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
In statewide polls of Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, and Wyoming, the National Wildlife Federation and Data for Progress now find that voters are also inclined to support CDR projects in their own states.
While voters aren’t very familiar with CDR, they are inclined to feel positively about the technology. In Wyoming, for example, NWF and Data for Progress find that 57% of voters feel favorably about “carbon dioxide removal technologies” when the term is first introduced in the survey while only 16% have unfavorable attitudes about the term.
Later in each survey, voters were asked about their support for CDR projects after reading the following brief description of them: “Carbon dioxide is a pollutant that contributes to climate change and is created during oil, gas, and coal production. New technologies and practices are able to completely remove carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.”
Based on this description, large majorities of voters in each state support allowing carbon dioxide removal sites to be built in their state:
- Colorado – 78% support / 16% oppose
- Louisiana – 75% support / 18% oppose
- Texas – 78% support / 15% oppose
- Wyoming – 68% support / 18% oppose
Support for allowing CDR sites is also bipartisan, with 65%+ of Republican voters in each state supporting CDR sites in their state.
One finding from these polls that deserves further exploration is that voters perceive cleaner air to be the greatest benefit of CDR projects. When asked what they expect the “top benefit” of CDR to be, voters across states are most likely to cite how it will “improve air quality and environmental health” – ahead of other rationales such as economic benefits for local communities.
The polls later explained that CDR “would not deliver short-term, local public health and soot pollution reduction benefits to communities hosting CDR facilities,” though it’s unclear how much this information may impact overall support for these projects.
Related Resources
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