Resource Center

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling about rising gas prices amid the war in Ukraine and new polls about protecting U.S. infrastructure and national parks from climate impacts.

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.

             
Social science research affirms the need for “critical capacities” of effective social movements (narrative, disruptive, electoral/institutional). What are these? How do we develop them in our campaigning and organizing work? In this training, we will work through the meaning of the critical capacities and their utility in multi-racial cross-class organizing. We will review case studies about how different coalitions have developed and sustained their critical capacities using evidence-based advocacy.
 

You’ve probably heard a lot from us about evidence-based advocacy, but what are we talking about when we talk about “evidence?” Does it mean we privilege academic research that has withstood the rigor of peer review, or that we should raise up lessons learned through the hard work of organizing on the ground? Do we gather evidence from a bird’s-eye view of the public at large through polling, a detailed examination of a particular audience through interviewing, or an introspective analysis of how our own organizations and coalitions operate? The short answer is that we think all of it matters as long as the insights generated can help us be more effective, challenge our assumptions, and grow as a movement. This post examines how we think about evidence at the Lab and how we can break evidence down into the categories of Listening, Watching, Tinkering, and Reflecting*.