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When times are tough, we stick together. In pandemics or power outages, after hurricanes or snow storms, we do better when we care for one another. No matter our race, income, zip code, faith, or gender, we want our families to be healthy and thrive for generations to come.
For as long as we can remember, a handful of politicians in our country have tried to divide us and lie about the damage to our climate and communities. They want to point fingers, assign blame, and turn us against each other while oil companies profit off of polluting our air, land, and water. Black, brown, or white, Indigenous, or immigrant – we aren’t going to fall for it.
The record-breaking number of voters in the 2020 election signals the growing wave of people who are ready and willing to shape the direction of our nation. On climate, a large majority of the American public understands climate change is happening and that we must do something about it – a prerequisite to building a successful, winning movement*.The greatest opportunity and challenge ahead of us is translating that momentum and support into widespread action for movement solutions. Because voting isn’t the end of engagement and public opinion data is merely statistics if not translated into sustained action.
The climate crisis will continue to shape our lives and political landscape. In these moments of crisis (think about the COVID-19 pandemic for example), new narratives, new policies, and new social behaviors are established. This is why how we act and what we say in these moments is critical because there’s a small window of persuasion before people’s attention moves on.
Race Class Narrative is an empirically-tested narrative framework that breaks through the noise of our opposition, unites people across races, backgrounds, and genders, and communicates solutions in a way that makes them obvious, achievable, and worth fighting for.
Thank you to Tinselyn Simms and Eleonore Wesserle of We Make the Future, Anthony Torres of ASO Communications, and the whole team at 100% MN for being bold practitioners of Race Class Narrative (+ Race Class Gender Narrative) and contributing to this insight.

More education about the Inflation Reduction Act is needed in order to bolster public support for it. New polling by the New York Times and Siena finds that voters are split roughly evenly on the Inflation Reduction Act when they aren’t provided with any details about it (37% support / 32% oppose), while new polling by Navigator finds that voters support the bill by an overwhelming margin after reading a brief description of its major provisions (64% support / 26% oppose).

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling about the Inflation Reduction Act, message testing about renewable energy, and new polling about climate change and extreme weather.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will invest $40 billion total, including $27 billion in direct spending, towards environmental justice communities and low-income residents—despite supporters claiming that the amount is $60 billion. Just Solutions Collective performed its own section-by-section analysis of the IRA’s text, adding up appropriations and other tailored spending to produce its own calculation. In total, the IRA includes $228 billion in appropriations and an additional $324 billion in tax expenditures. Direct appropriations in the IRA for environment, climate, and energy total $145 billion. This is dwarfed by the $270 billion provided in energy-related tax expenditures, through a variety of tax credits intended to incentivize primarily the private sector to invest in different aspects of the alternative energy economy: from mining companies extracting lithium to factories manufacturing inverters to refineries making biomass-based jet fuel to utilities installing solar arrays.