Location: Texas

Texas is back in the news this week because the state faced record temperatures that almost crashed its power grid. Well, earlier this year, Justin Rolfe-Redding at the Lab wrote about the upcoming Valentine’s Day campaign #BreakUpWithGas. The campaign was designed to push back on disinformation and use the one-year anniversary to galvanize public attention to the problem with fossil fuels. That Texas freeze in 2021 resulted in hundreds of Texans losing their lives and more than half of the state was without power or water service for days. Now it’s time to revisit that campaign and see what they/we can all learn.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new national polling on climate change, plastic pollution, and the seafood industry as well as new state polling in Texas about the state’s energy policies. 

Progressive narratives resonate more strongly than opposition messaging with communities of color, persuadable voters, and undecided voters. Climate is a top tier issues for persuadable voters: 64% percent of persuadable voters would be more likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to “move us toward reliable, clean and renewable sources of energy that create high-quality union jobs and curb damage to our climate.” Including the goals of “creating high-quality union jobs” increases support among all sub-groups of voters (base, persuadable, and conflicted) by 5-10%. This survey included many different kinds of messages on many different issues.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including a new messaging experiment to determine the most persuasive ways to talk about clean energy costs, findings from Yale’s latest mapping of climate change attitudes across the country, new polling on corporate accountability, and a new poll on Texas voters’ attitudes about climate and clean energy a year after the Texas Freeze.

Texas voters share deep concerns about extreme weather and support an expanded approach to the state’s energy future and infrastructure challenges. 53% of Texans are “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” about the extreme weather trends Texas will experience, including more 100-degree days, more extreme rainfall, more urban flooding, greater hurricane intensity, and increased drought severity by 2036. 65% are “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” that, given current trends, Texas will not be able to meet a significant amount of its future water needs. 49% are “not that confident” or “not at all confident” in Texas’ energy grid. 74% of Texas voters expressed concern about the state of Texas not applying for federal infrastructure funds. This poll also asks Texas voters about issues such as public schools, workforce, crime, and more.

Texas voters favor increasing renewable energy production. 73% believe Texas should increase solar energy production, and 68% believe the same for wind energy, compared to just 42% for natural gas, 28% for nuclear, and 18% for coal. 62% of Texans agree (“somewhat” or “strongly”) that Texas should aim to achieve 100% clean power. 61% agree it should be a land owner’s right to install wind turbines or solar panels on their property. 75% agree (“somewhat” or “strongly”) that wind and solar are reliable forms of energy. This poll includes many more related questions on energy policy.