HistPhil blog post: How Can Foundations Change Public Policy? The Case For Funding Grassroots NGOs

An essay by Leah Stokes was just published on HistPhil, a web publication centered on the history of philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. Leah's commentary explains how foundations can push for policy more effectively by prioritizing more funding to grassroots NGOs. Her essay profiles the work of the Energy Foundation, which played a key role in pushing for pro-renewable energy policies during the energy restructuring debate of the 1990s. While the Energy Foundation helped fund "insider" technical NGOs to design policy options (like the renewable portfolio standard), She argues that the Foundation's long-term funding of "outsider" grassroots NGOs was equally as important:

"In politics, it’s not enough to come up with a great idea—you also have to get that idea onto the agenda, and create political pressure to pass the policy. While technical groups are skilled at designing and negotiating policies with other political elites, they typically lack the grassroots networks necessary to get the policy signed into law."

To read Leah's full essay, click here.

Publication in Nature Energy: Renewable energy policy design and framing influence public support in the United States

A new paper has just been published by Leah Stokes and Christopher Warshaw: Renewable energy policy design and framing influence public support in the United States in the journal Nature Energy. This paper analyzes how policy framing shapes public support for energy policies. 

In this paper, we evaluate the congruence between public opinion and state-level renewable energy policy. They find that the presence and ambition of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) policies tracks public support for RPS policies in each state.

To measure the degree to which different policy frames shape voters' support for RPS bills, we then use a survey experiment to provide respondents different information about how the bill affects air pollution, jobs, energy prices, and climate change. They also varied whether the bill was supported by most Democrat or most Republican legislators. They find that public health, job creation, and partisan cues have significant effects on public support for the RPS; however, positive effects may be limited when voters' electricity bills increase. 

We suggest that policymakers, interest groups, and other actors carefully consider how they communicate energy policies to the public, which can ultimately make or break passage of energy reforms.

To read the full paper, click here or email Leah to request a copy.

Publication in Environmental Politics: Public opinion on climate change: Is there an economy–environment tradeoff?

A new paper has just been published by Matto Mildenberger and Anthony Leiserowitz: Public opinion on climate change: Is there an economy-environment tradeoff? in the journal Environmental Politics.

Between 2008 and 2012, multiple surveys found that US public beliefs and attitudes about global warming declined by over 10 percentage points. For example, Yale Project on Climate Change Communication surveys found that public belief that global warming is happening fell from 71% in 2008 to a low of 57% in 2010 (Figure 1) before beginning to rebound.

What happened?

Analysts have suggested that a lot of different factors contributed – from weather events to political polarization. And almost everyone has assumed that the Great Recession played a central role. In fact, politicians and academics often assume that public preferences for economic and environmental policies are substitutes. When the economy is bad, the public cares more about short-term economic needs and less about long-term environmental risks. When the economy improves, it provides space for the public to worry more about environmental harm.

Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of evidence demonstrating this relationship in practice. While several studies find some correlation between economic insecurity and climate opinions, there is no robust evidence that this association is causal. To examine this relationship in the context of climate change, in 2011 we recontacted the individuals who completed our 2008 survey. This allowed us to assess how individual-level climate beliefs and attitudes in the U.S. changed over time. This within-subject data allowed us to evaluate whether the Great Recession caused the declines in US climate beliefs.

The analysis led to a consistent and surprising result: The Great Recession did not change U.S. climate beliefs or attitudes at all. Instead, the change in U.S. climate opinions observed between 2008 and 2011 is better explained by other factors, such as cues from political elites. We found no association between declines in local economic conditions and climate beliefs. Changes in self-reported household income and the degree to which our survey respondents felt they had been impacted by the Great Recession did not predict changes in individuals’ climate change opinions between 2008 and 2011. Neither did state, county or zip-code level unemployment rates. Neither did changes in local housing market conditions or local gas prices. We also found no relationship between declines in local economic conditions and support for various climate policies. Many respondents became less supportive of climate policies between 2008 and 2011– but the individuals who were most hard-hit by the Great Recession were no more likely than others to reduce their support for climate policies.

So what happened? If it wasn’t the Great Recession, why did public climate change beliefs and attitudes decline so dramatically? The likely culprit is a parallel shift in American politics that happened during this time, including the rise of the Tea Party. We found a significant association, for example, between changes in the environmental voting record of a survey respondent’s congressional representative and the shift in a respondent’s climate beliefs and attitudes between 2008 and 2011. Political scientists have long argued that public opinion responds to messages and cues from political elites. Our results are consistent with this theory.

This finding is both good and bad news for climate advocates. On one hand, it suggests that public support for climate policy is unlikely to be affected by even large economic swings. Americans are likely to continue to support climate action in good and bad economic times. However, it also indicates that public opinion on climate change is very sensitive to changes in the Republican and Democratic party platforms and politicians’ talking points. This suggests that engaging Republican leaders in the issue will be important not just to the passage of climate legislation, but to shifting public opinion as well. 

For more, read the full publication here or email Matto to receive a copy.

Media Coverage: ENVENT lab research featured on the cover of the New York Times

ENVENT lab research by Matto Mildenberger and colleagues at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication was featured today on the New York Times front page. 

Mildenberger - NYT - March 21.png

Matto's research focuses on developing high-resolution spatial maps of US climate and energy opinions. An updated set of climate opinions maps for 2016 was recently released, including estimates of US public climate opinions at state, congressional district, metropolitan area and county scales.  The New York Times story profiled a number of findings from this update. 

For more, read the New York Times story here.

Find the original research article here.