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“Having this electric school bus is the confirmation that things happen because this community has power. I hope community leaders find the strategies to continue to activate that power.” – Teo Argueta, Chispa Arizona
Activists from Chispa Arizona won a huge victory this summer, when the Cartwright School District in Phoenix, Arizona purchased its first electric school bus — one step toward cleaner air for a county where thousands of Latinos are impacted by some of the country’s worst air pollution.
This week, as Latinx communities celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15) and mark the 4-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria making landfall in Puerto Rico, we share research and reflections on how Latinos are building power for climate action in their communities.

The Climate Reality Project and Citizens’ Climate Lobby were interested in knowing whether informing people about existing bipartisan governmental bodies (e.g., the Climate Solutions Caucus in the US House of Representatives) would make the public, in particular moderates and conservatives, both think and act differently about climate. Their hypothesis was that signaling bipartisanship and governmental provenance in an organization could increase enthusiasm about climate action by showing people that powerful interests could unite to tackle the issue.
They find that messaging about government initiatives (as opposed to business and NGO efforts) significantly increases peoples’ sense of efficacy for climate action, which then translates to increased support for personal action-taking. Among conservative men, emphasizing bipartisan government action increases their support for personal action by 30% compared to the bipartisan NGO condition due to raising their second-order beliefs. In other words, telling conservative men that bipartisan governmental groups exist to work on climate change reduces their propensity to say that the average Republican opposes climate action by the government. The researchers do not find any evidence that emphasizing bipartisan government action increases respondents’ optimism about the climate crisis.

Climate change is a major motivator to support clean energy among civically engaged Latinos. A survey of supporters of the Latino civic engagement organization Mi Familia Vota Education Fund found that climate was as or more often rated as an “extremely important” rationale for moving to 100% clean energy cities than any other reason, including the job benefits it could produce. Additionally, neither school systems nor city government emerged as an obviously more attractive campaign target when survey respondents were asked about their familiarity with and confidence in influencing these two institutions (i.e., “efficacy” beliefs). This research was conducted as part of a field research grant to Climate Parents from the Climate Advocacy Lab.

This post includes a roundup of climate + environment headlines from this week’s public polls, good data points to highlight, and a full roundup with key takeaways from each poll – including new polling on the Build Back Better budget and a new Pew report on climate change attitudes in advanced economies across the world.
HEADLINES

Pew – Most Americans are willing to make changes to their own lives to help reduce the effects of climate change; ideology plays a larger role in shaping Americans’ climate attitudes than it does in other advanced economies (Release, Full Report, Topline)
Data for Progress – The Build Back Better budget enjoys broad support in U.S. Senate battlegrounds, other key states (Release, National memo including links to 12 state-specific memos and toplines)
Data for Progress – Voters overwhelmingly support additional funding (beyond what’s included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework) to fully replace all lead drinking water pipes in the country (Release)
University of Bath – Climate anxiety is a major stressor for young people; over one-third of young Americans are hesitant to have children because of the climate crisis (Academic Article in Pre-Published Form)

Sending personal emails to elected officials seems more effective than sending bulk form emails. Further, given the low level of constituent messaging to politicians (at least in Canada) on climate change, there may be an opportunity to increase the volume of personal messages to increase the attention paid by politicians to the issue. This field experiment found that sending campaign emails to the Members of the Canadian Parliament asking them to make their own Twitter posts about climate change didn’t have much of an effect (neither when employing different issue frames such as public health nor standard environmental). However, follow-up interviews with parliament office staffers revealed that they’re more likely to pass along information to the politician they work for if there are enough (more than a couple) messages that are personalized by the sender—not bulk emails sent in the same way. Staffers also revealed that they generally don’t receive communication very often about climate change.