Resource Library

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.

On Thursday, September 15, the Climate Advocacy Lab hosted the second training in our North East Training Arc, Elements of a successful campaign strategy. This training focused on the importance of building a strong campaign strategy, understanding the componants that makeup a strategy that builds power, and looked at case studies of campaigns that we can learn from to bring key strategic vision to our organizations and communities. 
 

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling on the Inflation Reduction Act, attitudes toward the country’s major domestic energy sources, and a new paper on the behaviors and perceptions that correlate the most strongly with changes in climate attitudes.

I write to you from my AC-less apartment, with my windows wide open and hoping for a breeze. The west coast is experiencing another record-breaking heat wave and while I’m spared from the worst of it in typically cooler San Francisco, the Bay Area is being scorched, fueling several fast-moving wildfires. At the same time, an unimaginable one-third of Pakistan is currently underwater due to catastrophic flooding, displacing 33 million people. Extreme flooding and record droughts contributed to Jackson, Mississippi, a predominantly-Black city, losing access to safe drinking water. Both examples and realities continue to show how climate change disproportionately impacts people of color and those who have contributed the least to warming. Within this context, it feels timely to refresh ourselves on everything we know about extreme weather and public engagement as we work to engage our communities and audiences on climate action in these extreme times (You can find our last deep dive on this from 2020*).