Issue: Climate Policy

Gas prices are dominating Americans’ thinking, and people are more likely to blame our dependence on oil and price gouging by corporations than climate policies. 90% of Americans are very or fairly concerned about gasoline prices, compared to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (88%), cost of healthcare (84%), America’s dependence on oil (84%), climate change and impact of extreme weather events (64%), and COVID-19 (58%). 61% of Americans blame U.S. dependence on oil for gas price increases, compared to “price gouging and excessive profits for oil companies” (60%), decisions by oil producers in the United States and overseas to limit production (60%), Russia invading Ukraine (59%), the cancellation of some U.S. oil pipeline construction projects (54%), and environmental policies that limit oil drilling on public lands and offshore (46%). Predictably, Republicans are more likely to blame environmental policies, Democrats are more likely to blame oil dependence and fossil fuel companies’ price gouging—and swing voters are more likely to agree with Democrats. Majorities of voters favor lots of policies that could mitigate gas price increases, including cracking down on price gouging, banning some oil exports, windfall profits tax on fossil fuel companies, and more. This poll’s authors argue for being explicit about the causes of gas price increase—dependence on oil and fossil fuel companies profiting off this war—when messaging about gas prices and climate policy.

Americans are concerned about climate impacts on U.S. national parks and see national parks as key to climate solutions. 88% of Americans say climate change is negatively impacting national parks, including 95% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans. 92% of Democrats agree that national parks are an important part of the solution to reducing climate change (compared to 75% of Republicans). Similarly, 93% of Democrats say they would be more likely to support their representative if they supported legislation to reduce the impact on parks (compared to 73% of Republicans).

Land Justice can only be achieved through three goals: Reparations, Regenerate the Commons, and Landback. The organization Nuns & Nones has created three creative guides—on each of these themes—to imagining land justice. Our nation was built on stolen lands, with stolen labor, carrying a legacy of violence that continues to this day, so Reparations calls for those who have profited from this injustice to repair past and ongoing harms. The climate crisis is unfolding in our daily lives, so the Regenerate the Commons (“solidarity economy”) movement is building real alternatives to capitalism, seeking to shift wealth into shared ownership and governance, and to prioritize planet and people over profits. Through the process of colonization, Indigenous people were forcibly removed from billions of acres of land that they depended upon and belonged to, so the Landback movement can heal the harms of colonization, support regenerative stewardship of the land, and help us evolve into a new era of right relationship. These guides provide thorough arguments for each of these themes.