This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls - including new polling on electric vehicles, young Americans’ attitudes about climate change and President Biden’s climate actions, and the SEC’s new climate risk disclosure rule.

HEADLINES

Wall Street Journal
WSJ claims that “voters don’t care” about Biden’s climate policies, but their own polling shows that voters strongly support climate action [Article, Feb. Poll Topline]

[Youth] Climate Action Campaign
Climate change is a top-tier issue for young Americans, who respond positively to Biden’s climate accomplishments; highlighting how extreme weather will worsen without climate action is “the most effective climate change message” for motivating this audience [Memo]

Gallup
Roughly half of Americans say that they would consider an EV; the percentage of Americans who own EVs has increased in the past year, but so has the share who say that they “would not buy” one [Article]

Unlocking America’s Future + Morning Consult
Voters support the SEC’s new climate risk disclosure rule and widely agree that people should be able to take climate-related risks into account in their investment decisions [Release, Deck]

KEY TAKEAWAYS

President Biden’s climate accomplishments continue to resonate with young people - if they hear about them. Despite some misleading recent headlines about how Biden’s climate actions aren’t resonating with voters or with young people specifically, poll after poll shows that voters tend to be unaware of Biden’s climate accomplishments but overwhelmingly support them after learning about them. This is particularly the case with young people. In a newly released poll by the Climate Action Campaign, majorities of young Americans say that feel more favorably about Biden in response to hearing that he passed a plan to drive down energy costs by tripling clean energy production and that he passed “the ambitious climate and clean energy plan in U.S. history,” which will cut roughly 1 billion tons of carbon pollution by 2030.
Voters perceive it as common sense to require companies to disclose climate risks and allow investors to take these risks into account. Unlocking America’s Future and Morning Consult find that voters, by wide margins, support requiring climate financial risk disclosures by large companies and also say that people should be able to take climate-related risks into account in their investment decisions. It is effective to explain these policies as ways to provide people with more information to help them make better financial decisions, as it strikes voters as common sense and puts the onus on anti-ESG campaigners to explain why investors should be provided with less transparency or be restricted in the types of risks that they can protect themselves from.

GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
[Corporate Pressure] 80% of voters say that large companies and corporations have a responsibility to manage their impacts on the environment, including nearly half (46%) who say that companies and corporations have “a lot” of responsibility to manage their environmental impacts [Unlocking America’s Future + Morning Consult]
[Climate Risk Disclosure] 71% of voters agree that the federal government should require publicly traded companies and large corporations to publicly disclose data about their climate-related risks [Unlocking America’s Future + Morning Consult]
[Climate Risk Disclosure] Voters support the SEC’s new climate risk disclosure rule by a 63%-15% margin after reading a brief description of it [Unlocking America’s Future + Morning Consult]
[ESG/Responsible Investing] Voters support “investors and people saving for retirement having the ability the to participate in an investment strategy that considers climate-related risks” by a 61%-17% margin after reading a brief explanation of the issue [Unlocking America’s Future + Morning Consult]
[Youth] 63% of Americans aged 18-29 rate climate change as a “very important” issue to them [Climate Action Campaign]
[Youth] 63% of Americans aged 18-29 say that they feel more favorable toward President Biden after learning that he “passed a plan to drive down energy costs by tripling clean energy production, which could save Americans as much as $38 billion on electricity” [Climate Action Campaign]
[Youth] 59% of Americans aged 18-29 say that they feel more favorable toward President Biden after learning that he “passed the most ambitious climate and clean energy plan in U.S. history, which will cut roughly 1 billion tons of carbon pollution by 2030” [Climate Action Campaign]