Audience: Policymakers

Like many of you, the Lab team has been exploring how we can best support the climate movement at this critical moment, with nearly a trillion dollars on the table to reshape the climate and energy landscape following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),  Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and CHIPS & Science Act. Simultaneously, we know communities across the country continue to suffer from the impacts and fight build-out of the extractive, polluting fossil fuel industry – including many of my neighbors across the Southeast, calling on President Biden to oppose the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Maximize impact this legislative session with the Lab’s training on the most effective evidence-based ways to influence legislators and other policy makers.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new national polling on the Inflation Reduction Act, national polling on the Farm Bill, polling in Michigan about climate action at the state level, and a new survey of U.S. mayors about climate policy.

A good time to be thinking about best practices for educating—the Lab is (c)3—legislators and other policymakers on climate and clean energy. It’s been almost two years since we last touched on this in a Lab newsletter (and created our comprehensive guide). We revisit that guidance in light of the latest research and tools.

Gillion’s research examines whether a protest can make a real change – and the short answer is that it does. Looking at the effect of civil rights protests from the 1960’s–1990’s on Congress, he found that protest had a small but detectable effect on legislators. And he identified factors that increased the salience of a protest to politicians.