Resource Type: Tips & How-Tos

Following last week’s devastating news that more than 4,600 Puerto Ricans may have died as a result of Hurricane Maria, this week’s Lab alert shares the latest on what we know about how Americans’ climate opinions are affected by extreme weather events. The below can help campaigners as you plan responses to the inevitable extreme weather events to come this year, and we also flag potential new approaches worth exploring in the field.

How can climate advocates optimize our work using the latest tools and best practices from across the advocacy and campaigning industry? The Climate Advocacy Lab recently attended the Campaign and Advocacy Tech conferences, where practitioners, consultants, and vendors discussed strategy, trends, and technology. Here are some of our key takeaways. (And keep a lookout for a future Lab alert specifically covering insights and tools for distributed organizing and sustained engagement gleaned from these conferences.)

Last week, Climate Outreach released a revamped version of their amazingly helpful Climate Visuals website (more below). Drawing from that tool as well as other groups’ research, this week we revisit what we know about which climate and clean energy images are most effective at engaging and mobilizing people on our issues.

A common request the Lab team gets from Lab members is “big picture, tell me what works for better public engagement on climate.” This week we offer some answers to that big question, drawing on a multi-year collaboration between the Analyst Institute and the Climate Advocacy Lab.
First, some context on that collaboration. In many ways, our organizations are kindred spirits, a Hall & Oates for the world of evidence-based advocacy. We both help facilitate public engagement-related research in our respective spaces (the broader progressive community for Analyst Institute and climate and clean energy advocates for the Lab) and make the results of that and other research accessible to organizations on the ground. And we both share information with our members through a combination of in-person workshops, email updates, and members-only websites. (If you’re not already a member of the Analyst Institute, you can sign up here!)
Over the past four years, our work together has focused on learning how to mobilize people to take action on climate. In today’s alert, we’re highlighting 5 of our top recommendations based on that work.

Last week a few dozen Lab members convened in D.C. for our fifth Research + Experimentation workshop. The core of these workshops involves Lab members sharing recent field experiments and polling they’ve conducted around how to better engage Americans on climate and clean energy. Over the years, the “R&E” community has grown and diversified, piloted new initiatives to advance our collective learning capacity, and really embodied the Lab’s vision of a creative, generous, fun, and impactful movement! Read on for insights and learnings from a few of the research projects that were shared last week.

As EPA Administrator Pruitt and the Trump administration moved ahead Monday with their rollback of common-sense clean car standards—and Americans everywhere uttered a collective groan of frustration—this week we revisit why it is so critical at moments like this for advocates to give their supporters clear actions to take in response to discouraging news.

Last weekend’s March for Our Lives was one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam War and comes on the heels of nearly 9,000 protests documented between the Women's March last January and the end of 2017. Building on the Lab's previous tips* for sustaining engagement after mass mobilizations, this week we share reflections on what the March for Our Lives reminded us about building support for potentially polarizing policy issues and keeping folks engaged before and after moments of collective protest (in addition to participating in them!).

State-level climate initiatives have made headlines recently, most notably in Washington state where the latest effort to pass a carbon tax failed to get through the state legislature, although a carbon fee will be on the ballot this November. While some view it as a blue state-specific referendum on progressive climate policies, others suggest that carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies in states like Washington and Oregon could potentially provide a blueprint for policymakers and grassroots advocates across the country. Today we review recent polling and recap lessons learned for public engagement on carbon tax policies.

Peer-to-peer texting has grown quickly from a promising campaign trend to a valuable organizing tool. Subsequently, a set of “good practices” for its use in the climate and clean energy space is starting to emerge. Last week, Lab members came together for a conversation to share insights and learnings* from their peer-to-peer texting programs.