Resource Type: Evaluation & Measuring Progress

Climate activism can serve as a pathway for young people to develop as civic actors, leading to voting and to other forms of participation. There are opportunities to increase access for some youth—rates of taking climate action are lower for some groups, even after accounting for the skills that they bring to climate action. The youngest respondents (ages 14-19) were more likely than their slightly older peers (ages 20-24) to sign petitions, plan events, and use social media to inform and engage. All youth of color are more likely than white youth to plan events on climate and environmental issues. Liberals are most likely to sign petitions, have conversations, contact elected officials, and use social media compared to conservatives, moderate youth, and youth who don’t know their political ideology. Respondents living in rural areas are less likely to have conversations. There are opportunities to strengthen skills for some youth—including the ability to present and discuss information, and to inspire others to do actions (“readiness”), having the knowledge, skills, and availability to do the action (“efficacy”), and having the reasons and the support to do the action (“motivation”).

How do we build the power to win? The Lab is constantly working to uncover and share what works (and doesn’t) to help build grassroots power and win equitable solutions through evidence-based advocacy. A common request we receive is for rigorous best practices to grow people power. Last year, the Lab finalized our research vision and research agenda and solicited research project ideas from the Lab community, rooted in how to improve organizing and mobilizing, and grounded in a common conceptual framework.
Today we share results from these six collaborative research projects, and our guidance for your recruitment and mobilizing work, based on the evidence we gathered together.

Most protest movements have little success in achieving their aims, or otherwise positive outcomes—but a small percentage of protest movements will achieve outcomes large enough to warrant funding a portfolio of social movement organizations. This resource may be useful for grantmakers and advocates who want to pursue the most effective ways to bring about change for a given issue, particularly on climate change or animal welfare. There is solid evidence that protests can cause small changes in public opinion on an issue (swaying about 2-5% of the population). There is some evidence—but less—that protest movement activity can bring about policy change.

Offshore wind and accountability were the top climate-related issues on social media and in media from June 2022. This resource produced separate reports for four regions of the country (linked separately in this resource’s notes). Climate itself was a top issue area in the West and Midwest. Transportation and electric vehicles did not receive much coverage by quantity or quality in June.

This article discusses seven key sources of opposition to renewable projects and recommendations for a path forward.

Accountability, gas, and electric vehicles were the climate-related issues that gained most social media traction in April and May 2022. These short reports from 4 regions of the US (Midwest, Southeast, Northeast, West) show some top-performing social media posts per category from April-May. The reports also describe how three issue areas did not get as much traction as expected: transportation, offshore wind, and renewables. These trends were true across all 4 regions. These reports conclude with a way to “put it all together” when constructing social media messaging, including these sample messages: “Jobs: clean energy jobs are real,” “Health: clean energy is safe; fossil fuels threaten your health,” “Action: climate policies are an investment worth making now,” “Fairness: climate change hurts the most vulnerable the hardest,” “Impacts: climate change is directly impacting you,” and “Lies: fossil fuel interests are lying to you; they want to protect their profits—not you.”