Chapter 7
The Public Wants Action — Now
The majority of Americans see climate change as a serious problem. We need to do something about it.
“An overwhelming majority of the American public, including half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming.”
— The New York Times, January 30, 2015, reporting on a poll conducted with Stanford University and Resources for the Future
Americans want action to fight climate change, and they want it now.
Seven out of ten Americans view climate change as a serious problem, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll, and a “lopsided and bipartisan” majority support federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions, the Washington Post reported.
Support for limits on carbon pollution comes from Republicans and Democrats alike, red states as well as blue states, Fortune 500 companies, faith leaders, health groups, labor organizations, and many others.
A poll conducted in October and November 2014 by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania confirmed majority support for the Clean Power Plan. It also found that just 9 percent of those surveyed backed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) call for states to “just say no” and refuse to cooperate with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plan.
Growing public concern about climate change is reflected by the more than eight million comments submitted on the Clean Power Plan — the most the EPA has ever received on an issue — and by the more than 400,000 people who turned out for the People’s Climate March in New York City in September 2014.
A huge majority of Americans support regulating carbon from power plants. And they’re even willing to pay for it.
Worldwide, nearly 80 percent of people are very concerned about the impacts of climate change, according to June 2015 consultations of 10,000 people in 75 countries. “I think we are in the process of putting to bed the myth of not enough public support,’’ said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change. Action now is necessary.
Polls by Wall Street Journal/NBC News, the New York Times, Stanford University, Resources for the Future, and the Pew Research Center also confirm the strong public support for limiting carbon pollution from power plants, which fuels dangerous climate change.
“A huge majority of Americans support regulating carbon from power plants. And they’re even willing to pay for it,” read the Washington Post headline on its poll. It found that even in states where a majority of electricity is produced by burning coal, “69 percent say the government should place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”
Polling shows that congressional Republicans fighting the EPA are out of touch with members of their own party. Half of all Republicans said they favor government limits on carbon pollution, according to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Yale University.
Nearly half of Republicans said the United States should take a leadership role in the global fight against climate change, and majorities of both parties believe environmental protections “improve economic growth and provide new jobs” in the long run, according to the poll.
Research by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication also found a majority of Republican voters in support of regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant “in contrast to the current goal of Republican leaders in Congress to block EPA regulations.”
Four EPA administrators from Republican administrations — William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly, and Christine Todd Whitman — have spoken out in support of carbon limits.
The costs of inaction are high.
Nearly three-fourths of the U.S. population — red as well as blue states — support government limits on carbon pollution, according to a statistical model built by researchers from Yale and Utah State universities using several years of polling data to estimate climate change opinion by state, county, and congressional district.
A poll commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council found that 64 percent of businesses, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, believe government action is needed to reduce carbon emissions by power plants.
There is also support from states that rely on coal to generate electricity. In Pennsylvania, a December 2014 survey found eight in ten, including majorities across party lines, in support of state-based action to reduce carbon pollution.
Pennsylvanians are especially enthusiastic about energy efficiency and wind and solar power, which they see as creating jobs, cleaning the air, and increasing energy independence, according to the bipartisan polling team of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz, & Associates and Public Opinion Strategies (the poll was commissioned by NRDC).
In Illinois, another heavy coal-using state, a February 2015 poll found “widespread enthusiasm’’ for increased use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Eight in ten, including majorities across party lines, support developing a state plan to reduce carbon pollution.
In Ohio, eight in ten also supported a state plan to reduce carbon pollution and increase the use of clean energy and energy efficiency, according to a February 2015 poll by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz, & Associates and Public Opinion Strategies for NRDC.
Americans, by more than a three-to-one margin, trust the EPA more than Congress to address air pollution, according to a poll commissioned by the American Lung Association.
Strong public support for limiting carbon pollution from power plants is further reflected by comments submitted to the EPA on the Clean Power Plan.
State environmental leaders, energy agency leaders, and public utility commissioners from 14 states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — expressed support for the plan.
“The costs of inaction are high,” they wrote to the EPA. “The harms from climate change will only continue to grow in the future, and the most vulnerable in our society are at greatest risk.”
The plan also has drawn support from business groups. More than 200 businesses — including Nike, Starbucks, Levi Strauss, and Nestlé — stated that the carbon limits are “grounded in economic reality.”
“We know that tackling climate change is one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century, and we applaud the EPA for taking steps to help the country seize that opportunity,” the groups wrote under the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy.
There is also support from labor. The EPA’s plan permits each state to tailor a carbon-reduction plan “to the specifics of its local and regional economy, which in turn can create opportunities to sustain and grow jobs, encourage investment, and jump-start new technologies,” said BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental and labor groups.
The plan also has drawn widespread support from ordinary Americans. A Pennsylvania woman, for example, wrote to the EPA: “For the sake of my grandchildren, please do this.”
An increasing number of foundations, governments, universities, faith-based organizations, and others are expressing their support for climate action through their pocketbooks.
Governments from San Francisco and Seattle to Norway have moved to divest from some or all fossil-fuel companies as have a number of universities, including Georgetown, Stanford, and the University of Hawaii. Religious institutions such as the Church of England have joined in the divestment, as well as foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, whose family derived its fortune from Standard Oil.
Some 181 institutions and local governments and 656 individuals representing more than $50 billion in assets have pledged to divest from fossil fuels, said Arabella Advisors, which consults with philanthropists and investors, in a September 2014 report.
“The work of understanding and responding to the demands of climate change is urgent and complex. It requires our most serious attention.”
Universities have been especially active in response to student-led campaigns moved by the urgency of the climate crisis. Georgetown announced in June 2015 that it will not make any direct investments from its $1.5 billion endowment in companies whose principal business is mining coal for use in energy production.
“The work of understanding and responding to the demands of climate change is urgent and complex,” said Georgetown’s president, John J. DeGioia. “It requires our most serious attention.”
In May 2014, Stanford announced a similar move, citing its responsibility “as a global citizen to promote sustainability for our planet.’’ The University of Dayton, a Catholic school in Ohio committed to divestment in June 2014, saying its “values of leadership and service to humanity call upon us to act.”
In California, a Senate committee passed legislation in April 2015 to require the state’s pension system — the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and California State Teachers’ Retirement System — to divest from coal companies. The bill, said its author, Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León, will align the state’s public-employee retirement funds with California’s values as a global leader in addressing the threat of climate change. Similar divestment legislation is under consideration in Massachusetts and Vermont.
Just before the U.N. Climate Summit in September 2014, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced it would divest from fossil fuel, citing its commitment to combating climate change.
“Americans don’t want dirty energy,” said Franz Matzner, director of NRDC’s Beyond Oil initiative. “Instead, they’re calling for clean energy, health safeguards, and steady resolve to protect our future from dangerous climate change.”
From Clean Power: The Case for Carbon Pollution Limits
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