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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.

Key Takeaways:

Support for Biden and Democrats’ new economic plan is vast, with seven in ten Americans in support of it.
Lowering prescription drug prices and expanding Medicare to include vision, dental, and hearing coverage are the most broadly supported proposals for new economic legislation.
Nearly three in four say it is urgent that the House and Senate pass this legislation.

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 polls on the Build Back Better budget, a study on the impact of language in the natural gas debate, and extreme weather polling.
HEADLINES

Navigator – Specific details engender broad support for the Build Back Better budget, even when it’s framed as a Democratic bill (Release, Slide Deck, Topline)
Washington Post/ABC News – The Build Back Better budget has slim majority support when described as $3.5 trillion in spending for “expanded social programs, educational assistance and programs to address climate change” (Topline, Crosstabs)
No Labels & American Action Network – Opposition polls claim that Americans want to pause on the kind of government spending included in the Build Back Better budget (Axios Article on No Labels Poll, No Labels Release, American Action Network Release)
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication – Language used to describe gas as an energy source is hugely impactful in shaping opinions; Americans have positive attitudes about “natural gas,” but not about methane (Academic Paper, YPCCC Article)
Economist/YouGov – Americans continue to attribute recent extreme weather events more to climate change than natural patterns; nearly one in four say they were personally impacted by Eastern seaboard hurricanes (Topline, Crosstabs)

Before we can convince the American public to walk the walk on climate action, we’ve got to get them to talk the talk. Read on about our work to normalize relational climate conversations and move folks forward on climate change.

Prompts to help you think through developing a research project, from big-picture strategy to the specifics of a hypothesis.