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As the global climate crisis intensifies, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and severe worldwide. This escalating heat has placed the topic at the forefront of climate change discussions, with city governments increasingly concerned about the risks posed by extreme temperatures. To limit the impact on communities and safeguard public health, effective communication of heat risks, especially to vulnerable populations, is of paramount importance.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including on prioritizing clean energy sources over fossil fuels, voters supporting investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, and clean energy in key states.

Voters in rural-heavy counties in Georgia and Ohio tilt toward supporting wind and solar farms, but attitudes are quite malleable. Inoculation against character concerns is hard, so it may be better to focus proactive messaging on the benefits of wind and solar farms. A plurality of voters start out supporting wind and solar farms in their community but fewer than half of voters have intense attitudes either way and one-quarter are completely neutral. While voters intuitively get the pollution reduction benefits of these farms, they are more skeptical of the benefits to themselves and farmers – and they are concerned about their ROI. Encouragingly, our messaging is effective at increasing the belief that wind and solar farms will provide benefits to farmers and families – and that they create enough energy to be worth it. However, efforts to inoculate people against concerns about the impact on community character in this research were unsuccessful. Opposition attacks have a real impact, but simple pushback that ties this disinformation to Big Oil and Coal CEOs is quite successful in defusing these attacks. Positive messaging is effective at building support, especially with Democrats, less conservative Republicans, and women.

Describe the clean energy aspects of the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) as a “landmark achievement” to address climate change and show off local benefits to communities, rather than as a way for people to save money. This is one insight from the Potential Energy Coalition’s research after they surveyed over 15,000 people, tested dozens of messages and gathered hundreds of hours of interview data from Americans across the political spectrum in the past nine months. All to answer the question, what is the best way to talk about clean energy that gets Americans excited? This webinar also covered the public’s current state of opinion and knowledge on these topics, other effective messages and messaging traps to avoid, plus wording guidance.

Support for clean energy is vulnerable to highly localized concerns. Rural residents hold favorable views of solar farms (55%) and wind farms (50%). When asked about wind/solar farms in their community, support drops to 37%. 61% of respondents have a favorable opinion of oil and gas companies while 59% have a favorable opinion of clean energy companies. Many believe that fossil fuel sources remain a critical part of our energy mix and don’t think clean energy will be ready to truly replace them any time soon. Advocates are more likely to win over rural hearts and minds by avoiding zero-sum thinking and leaning into the benefits of many energy sources. Early education can inoculate against mis/disinformation. Opposition messages are not that strong when a countervailing message is provided, especially when coming from trusted messengers. Overall, messages in opposition to clean energy were more than 10% less convincing in this research than messages in support.