When I Say "Climate," You Say "Corps!"
Hi, hello, hey! Is this thing on? Welcome back to Data for Climate Progress — your one-stop shop for all things climate at Data for Progress. Catch us here every month for our latest climate polling, juicy insights, and can’t-miss reading lists.
As always, we’d love to hear from you — drop us (Grace Adcox and Catherine Fraser) a line at gracea@dataforprogress.org and catherine@dataforprogress.org. Forwarded this email? You can subscribe below.
ICYMI During Our Record-Hot Summer
After a summer of climate disaster and sky-high utility bills, it’s no surprise that voters are tuned in to extreme weather and want utility companies to do their part on climate. Following last month’s devastating wildfire in Maui, FiveThirtyEight published our poll finding that 74% of voters believe utility companies should bear responsibility for preventing extreme weather events, like wildfires.
Riding on this wave of utility accountability, we released polling with our friends at Evergreen Action reflecting broad support (65%) for the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rules to cut pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants. This research bolstered a letter to Edison Electric Institute (EEI) member utilities, calling on them to publicly reject the lobbying organization’s reported extreme opposition to EPA’s proposed carbon standards.
POLITICO’s Agriculture newsletter detailed the findings of a report we published with Farm Forward on humanewashing, which revealed that a significant portion of Americans are concerned about the accuracy of food marketing, particularly with respect to antibiotic usage in animal products and other marketing that doesn’t align with actual practices of sustainability or ethical treatment.
ICYMI: Over the past year, Data for Progress fielded 70 weekly national surveys asking voters about the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), totaling a whopping 22,668 respondent interviews. We then modeled the data to map state-level estimates of opinion on the law, finding overwhelming bipartisan support across the country at the anniversary of the IRA’s passage! DFP also finds support for key provisions of the IRA has only increased — particularly among Republican voters. Three cheers for the birthday bill!!
When I Say “Climate,” You Say “Corps!”
Last week, Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led a letter to President Biden calling for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps, citing DFP polling which found that 63% of voters support the establishment of a Civilian Climate Corps.
And now, it’s ACC-tually happening!! President Biden announced the American Climate Corps (ACC) following years of tireless advocacy from climate and public service advocates. Don’t just take it from us, though; Governor Jay Inslee said it best here on the Data for Progress blog all the way back in 2019!
The program will train young people all over the country to take on good-paying, clean energy and climate jobs. Interested in learning more or signing up for the ACC? Check it out here.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at our NYC Climate Week events! On Wednesday, September 20, we co-hosted a Sips for State Climate Action happy hour with our partners Climate Cabinet Education, Evergreen Collaborative, and the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. And a big thank you to our special guests, Gov. Jay Inslee and New York State Assembly member Emily Gallagher!
On Thursday, September 21, we co-hosted a happy hour and panel discussion on methane pollution with our partners at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Climate Nexus, Climate Advocacy Lab, Gas Leaks, NY Renews, Environmental Polling Consortium, and Acadia Strategies. It was an amazing end to an action-packed week full of catching up with friends and colleagues across the Big Apple.
Missed us in NYC? Join us on Thursday, October 5, at 11 a.m. ET for our joint webinar with World Resources Institute on Creating an Equitable Clean Energy Future: Engaging Local Communities in Project Planning and Development, which follows up on our recent co-authored article highlighting broad support for project agreements, like community benefits agreements. Though not a silver bullet, project agreements can embed community and labor benefits within climate infrastructure projects, redress legacies of harm and environmental injustice, and build public support for clean energy. In addition to a fireside chat with Betony Jones, director of the Office of Energy Jobs at the U.S. Department of Energy, we’ll be moderating an exciting panel discussion about project agreements and community engagement, and how these fit in the clean energy transition and the implementation of the IRA and IIJA. RSVP here.
Clearing the Air: DOE, DAC, and Big Oil Greenwashing
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear in its recent Sixth Assessment Report that meeting ambitious climate targets can no longer be achieved through decarbonization alone; in addition to preventing emissions, society will now have to permanently remove past emissions from the atmosphere as well. This process, known as carbon dioxide removal (CDR), can be achieved in multiple ways, including Congress's recent favorite, direct air capture (DAC), which uses large fans to blow air through a filter that captures carbon dioxide.
As a progressive player in the CDR and DAC space, DFP aims to be a voice for equitable CDR development. DAC can be a means of rectifying past carbon pollution, but only if it is deployed alongside policies that advance aggressive decarbonization while also addressing legacies of environmental injustice. Our Progressive Platform for CDR lays out guiding principles for CDR, defining what qualifies as progressive CDR and, importantly, what does not: excuses to continue reliance on fossil fuels and to deter swift, bold transitions away from our petro-carbon economy. With the goal of advancing a new model of infrastructure development that prioritizes community consultation and input before a project begins or a developer has a permit in hand, DFP has hosted seven DAC-focused workshops in communities that will likely be impacted by CDR, aiming to understand and amplify community concerns, red lines, and hopes for an emerging DAC industry. You can find this work, including our most recent memo summarizing our findings from our workshops along the Gulf Coast, here.
There may be paths forward for equitable, climate-positive DAC, but they do not look like the one we’re on now: corporations able to buy offsets to emissions they could easily prevent, little to no data transparency on projects (current and prospective), and most importantly, the capture of the industry by fossil fuel giants. If the Biden administration wants DAC to serve as a climate solution rather than a threat to hard-won climate victories, it cannot allow DAC to become a greenwashing tool for fossil fuel companies seeking to perpetuate their profit interests and evade necessary emissions reductions.
E&E News and Heatmap covered the release of our DAC hubs sign-on letter, which included signatories from 17 climate and environmental justice (EJ) organizations, and spoke with DFP’s Celina Scott-Buechler, who highlighted the risks of handing the keys of this new industry to fossil fuel companies. DFP is proud to be part of CALDAC, a coalition of organizations envisioning the first community-driven, and potentially community-owned, DAC hub, which was spotlighted in POLITICO’s Energy podcast earlier this month.
Call us “climate optimists,” but we believe that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can — and must — deploy climate infrastructure at the scale and speed that the climate crisis demands of us, while also ensuring that communities are engaged throughout the entire project development process. The Data for Progress climate team is excited to leverage our deep expertise in quantitative and qualitative research to help answer these and other thorny questions that lie ahead.
Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis, by Adrienne Buller and Mathew Lawrence (Verso Books)
Our Green Transition May Leave Black People Behind, by Rhiana Gunn-Wright (Hammer and Hope)
Want to Join the American Climate Corps? Here’s What We Know So Far. by Kate Yoder (Grist)
Our fearless Executive Director, Danielle Deiseroth, joined the My Climate Journey podcast to talk about all things climate, DFP, and polling. Check it out here! Danielle was also featured by Canary Media as an “IRA insider” – find her behind-the-scenes IRA tips and analysis here.
When you say climate, I say can I have that American flag, that flag that represents so many lies, can I take it to cover the grave which will be our world if powerful leaders around the word do not declare a climate emergency?