Resource Center

Join the Rural Climate Partnership for a presentation on how we can use a benefits-forward narrative strategy to connect with rural people. Together, we’ll explore 5 narrative keys that allow communicators to reach across cultural differences and avoid culture war frames to connect on shared values.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including a new Pew report on Americans’ climate attitudes, a new analysis of pro-climate Republicans, and new polling on President Biden’s investments in clean energy and infrastructure.

It’s been over a year since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). But the work has really just begun! Today, we wanted to provide an update on the latest research, polling, and strategic analysis related to public engagement and organizing around ongoing implementation of the IRA+ (the IRA, plus the other major Biden-era federal initiatives*).
We first wrote about the IRA soon after its passage. Our newsletter in June (“Our opportunity to build durable power through IRA implementation”) has a title that sums up the Lab’s orientation to the topic (along with our IRA+ strategy and research agenda memo), and serves as a summary of the state of knowledge in the spring; so we suggest you go read it for a good starting place, on top of which this update builds.
Today, we also debut a new tool on our site, the “Research Roundup: Inflation Reduction Act”.
This roundup page will provide a regularly updated one-stop-shop for all the research, polling, strategy, and insights we’ve identified related to advocacy, public engagement and organizing around IRA+ implementation. Stop by every few weeks to see what is new.
Please note that the Lab’s orientation to this topic is in keeping with our mission, and we seek to provide evidence-based insights needed to build durable people power. So we’re not seeking to provide guidance on all the policy ins and outs, nor how to secure any federal dollars. Contact us and we can direct you to other organizations that can answer those questions.

Americans widely agree that climate change is harming people in the U.S. today and expect climate impacts to get worse in the future. Most trust that climate scientists understand the problem, despite doubts among Republicans. 75% of Americans recognize that human activity is contributing at least “some” to climate change. 71% of Americans agree that climate change is causing at least “some” harm to people in the U.S. today. 56% of Americans rate climate change as an “extremely” or “very” serious problem. 65% of Americans believe that climate scientists understand how climate change affects extreme weather events “very” or “fairly” well. 63% of Americans believe that climate scientists understand the causes of climate change “very” or “fairly” well.