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.

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A Moment for Those Affected by Catastrophic Flooding in Nepal and Tibet

I’m ending the month with Nepal and Tibet weighing heavily on my mind. It’s hard to put into words the horror of the flash flooding on the border of Nepal and Tibet. The flood is unlike anything I’ve ever seen — an utterly devastating wall of water sweeping away people, and everything else in its path. If you haven’t yet seen it, please know that the footage circulating online, especially that from the Rasuwagadhi border point, is incredibly upsetting and disturbing.

As of this writing, 389 people are feared dead, with over 1,000 still missing. The border region is a popular tourist and trekking destination, and more than 800 of the missing are believed to be foreigners, including at least 177 from India, 63 from the U.S., 34 from Australia, 33 from the U.K., and 25 from Canada.

The flooding was likely set off by the collapse of a glacier 40 miles north of Kathmandu, leading to an “ice avalanche.” A 2,000-foot wide chunk of ice broke off the glacier, sending ice and water tumbling from an altitude of around 17,000 feet, geologist Daniel Shugar told The New York Times. He added that the ice chunk fell almost 4,000 feet before making impact on the valley floor.

Simon Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland, paints an utterly humbling picture of the resulting chain impact:

This is a big chunk of ice that is stored at high elevation in the mountain, with a huge amount of potential energy. When it breaks off, the sheer force of the drop pounds the ice into a dangerous, fast-moving mix. That ice just gets pulverized into water.

We know climate change will have catastrophic impacts. We know climate change is warming the Himalayas, melting glaciers and increasing the potential for devastating avalanches that lead to flash flooding.

But it’s hard to imagine or prepare for the devastation we’re seeing in Nepal and Tibet.

I’m grieving with all those affected by the floods. You can find information on how to send aid directly to the region here.

The flooding in Nepal and Tibet should be yet another wake-up call for those arguing that warming above 1.5 C won’t be that bad.

In the wake of yet another climate disaster, there is once again moral clarity: We must phase out fossil fuels.

— In solidarity, Catherine

1 in 3 Alaska Survey Respondents Allegedly Named “Dan Sullivan”

• ICYMI, dear readers (especially those in the continental U.S.), we’ve developed quite a knack for surveying Alaskans in recent years. In our most recent survey of Alaska voters, we find that most are worried about affording basic necessities over the next year, and that worry has risen across the board since Data for Progress last surveyed voters in October 2025. The share of respondents who are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about affording gasoline and other transportation costs has climbed from 54% to 67%, as fuel costs have risen sharply across the state this year. Worry about affording monthly utilities like electricity or heat has risen from 54% to 66%, and groceries and food from 61% to 66%. Ahead of the midterms, we asked Alaskans – and specifically Alaska Native voters – about affordability, LNG, the state’s Permanent Fund Dividend, healthcare, K-12 education, and so much more. Check out the full brief — and its fantastic data visualizations – here.

Building Resilient Communities: Public Support for Green Urbanism

By Ayseli Karabekmez

As climate change worsens, flash flooding, heat waves, poor air quality, and stormwater runoff are becoming more frequent across the United States, and Americans are increasingly making the connection between extreme weather events and climate change. As cities across the country look to adapt to a changing climate and intensifying extreme weather, green urbanism can help communities become more resilient, while reducing their own emissions. To understand voter awareness of and support for green urbanism — which includes investments in green infrastructure, energy-efficient buildings, and transit-oriented development — we surveyed 1,058 U.S. likely voters last month.

Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the term “green urbanism” on face, they strongly support green urbanist infrastructure after learning more about it. Nearly 4 in 5 voters support energy-efficiency standards for buildings (79%), upgrading existing buildings with energy-efficient technologies (78%), and offering financial incentives for energy efficiency (77%).

Majorities also support green infrastructure, such as rain gardens (78%), permeable pavement (71%), and green roofs (62%). When asked about potential obstacles to local implementation of green urbanism, voters most often say limited funding (31%) and lack of local leadership (18%).

Despite the costs associated with making green infrastructure and transportation improvements, voters are willing to make financial sacrifices for green urbanism. A majority (54%) believe cities should invest now in projects that reduce flooding, extreme heat, and other climate impacts, even if doing so requires higher taxes.

Across urban, suburban, and rural communities, Americans support local climate solutions that can deliver community-level resilience, despite their limited awareness of green urbanism.

Read the full brief here.

• “A ‘Glass Half Full’ Isn’t Enough to Fight Climate Change,” by Amanda Levin (Heatmap)

• “Extreme weather is changing how Americans see the world,” by Jake Bittle (Grist)

• “Where is the U.S. climate movement?” by Kai Bosworth (Verso Blog)

• “The global green transition won’t be driven by self-interest alone,” by Noah Gordon (The Financial Times)

• “Changes in the light: Notes on a capital theory of climate adaptation—and, tentatively, how to invest in a just transition for our quality of life.” by Advait Arun (Crow’s Nest)

• “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed,” by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Harper Collins)

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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.

Here at Data for Progress, we’ll never paywall our work. Democratizing access to public opinion research is the whole point of what we do, and that shouldn’t depend on whether someone can pay for it.

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But paid support is what lets us do more of it. It’s what funds more research and polling for more progressive partners. It lets us turn around rapid-response data amid a breaking news cycle. And it will help sustain the progressive movement for the fights – and wins – ahead.

Data for Progress is a nonprofit, and small-dollar fundraising — from folks like you — helps us to stay nimble, independent, and focused on the issues that matter most. There’s no sugarcoating it: Philanthropic dollars are incredibly hard to come by these days, and your support helps us keep the lights on.

If a few hundred of you decide to support this work, we can do more of exactly what you see every month in this newsletter. If you can, please consider becoming a paid subscriber — every bit helps.

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Thank you so much for your continued support.

— Catherine and Grace

DFP DC Climate HH ✅

We held a great happy hour in DC this month at Franklin Hall! Thanks to everyone who came out – the people are really what make this work worthwhile. We’re lucky to be in community with such great partners and people! Stay tuned – we’ll be sharing more about our New York Climate Week happy hour soon! 👀

Postcard From 430 PPM: One Month, Three Heat Domes

• This month, three separate heat domes hit the U.S., with millions experiencing dangerous highs in the 100s. Just this week, 70 million Americans will be under excessive heat advisories. Heat is a silent killer – the deadliest weather phenomenon in the U.S., in fact. As climate change exacerbates the frequency and severity of extreme heat, workers in the U.S. lack protections, like access to air conditioning and cooling and water breaks. As the nation swelters, our polling finds that voters increasingly tie intensifying extreme weather events to climate change, with 67% saying that climate change is making heat waves worse. What’s more, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of voters (88%) support requiring employers to provide drinking water, rest breaks, and air conditioning or shade to workers during extreme heat conditions. Read the full brief here and find coverage of our survey in The Guardian here.

Science, Please! Voters Trust Scientists on Funding Decisions

• After the Office of Management and Budget proposed a rule requiring that federally funded research “advance the President’s policy priorities,” we’re left wondering what Russ Vought’s seventh-grade science teacher ever did to him. The rule would put politics over science, and give the White House – read: politicians and the Trump administration – greater influence over federal research funding decisions. We find that voters oppose this rule and want scientists — not Trump’s cronies – deciding what to research. In fact, a majority of voters (70%) say panels of scientists and experts should decide which research proposals receive funding based on scientific merit. Read the full brief here.

Can’t GreenwASh Without (Natural) Gas

• We know you’ve seen the American Petroleum Institute ads, the sunny BP commercials, and the proud “clean-burning natural gas” proclamations on the side of city buses. But just in case you weren’t already convinced of fossil fuel greenwashing, a new report from our friends at the Center for Climate Integrity has the receipts. Their new report documents how the natural gas industry promoted the misconception that natural gas is a “clean” climate solution while downplaying the significant climate impacts of methane pollution and leaks. Unfortunately, our new polling with CCI suggests these greenwashing efforts have been relatively effective, with most voters (68%) holding favorable views of natural gas before learning more about its negative impacts. The good news, however? Support for natural gas declines by 23 percentage points after respondents are presented with information about methane pollution and the industry’s misleading messaging, with 45% holding favorable views of natural gas at the end of our survey. Voters are ready to hold the industry accountable for misleading the public, too: A strong majority support their state filing a civil lawsuit if oil and gas companies knowingly misled the public about the health and climate impacts of natural gas. Read the full brief here.

I’d Like My CHIPS With a Side of Legally Binding Commitments

• As construction begins on Micron’s $100 billion semiconductor chip manufacturing campus near Syracuse, New York, community members and groups have raised concerns about the megaproject’s environmental impacts. We teamed up with Jobs to Move America to understand how registered voters in Onondaga County view Micron’s chipmaking complex. We find that 70% of registered Onondaga County voters support the megaproject, though 60% feel the project will have a negative impact on the environment. What’s more, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority (87%) support legally binding requirements for Micron to make investments in job creation, environmental protection, and public infrastructure. Read JMA’s press release here.

If July 1 Wasn’t the Week Democrats Started Saying “Climate Change” Again, This Has to Be the Week, Right?!

By Catherine Fraser

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans are experiencing dangerous levels of heat today, amid the third heat dome this summer. Wildfire smoke and extreme heat conditions are set to blanket most of the country this week. Meanwhile, wildfires rage in Spain and France, where more than 300,000 people have fled their homes. In France, government orders are driving what may be the largest non-wartime evacuation in the country’s history.

As members of Congress head home to their districts for the August recess, they’ll be among the over 340 million Americans experiencing the climate crisis right in front of their eyes. The climate crisis is all around us this summer. It’s in the masks worn to protect from poor air quality, the heat advisories and cooling centers, and the skyrocketing electricity bills as air conditioning units run constantly.

And yet, Democrats remain largely mum on climate change. And, as Kate Aronoff points out, they’re not the only ones – mainstream media largely is, too. Just look at this screenshot from The New York Times, taken today (July 29):

It’s not just The New York Times that’s failing to say *why* it’s become hotter; just look at this Washington Post article from July 24:

“The background influence of rising global temperatures”?! The Washington Post even had to wonder to itself if it has, indeed, been a hot summer:

I mean, come on!

These three screenshots aren’t exceptions – they’re part of a broader “climate hushing” trend. Climate change reporting fell by 14% in 2025, and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Media and Climate Change Observatory has found that U.S. coverage of climate change has decreased since its peak in 2010. Last month, amid another heat wave, NBC, ABC, and CBS all led their broadcasts with stories of extreme weather, yet failed to mention climate change. As the FAIR project put it, it’s as if these heat records were broken by some “unknown force.”

All the while, the wildfires and heat waves rage on.

Yet, even as our media and elected leaders fail to make the connection between climate change and intensifying extreme heat, wildfires, and extreme weather events, Americans are still making that connection.

A majority of voters (61%) think that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and most think that climate change is making those weather events worse. This includes 67% who think climate change is making heat waves worse, as well as wildfires (64%), droughts (63%), and flooding and flash floods (62%).

We can and must talk about climate change, and we can do so in a way that’s tangible and grounded in the ways in which climate policy can deliver affordability and meaningful improvements in the day-to-day lives of Americans. To that end, you can find more on our work to advance a working-class climate agenda here.

• Run, Don’t Walk: Naomi Klein is on Substack: “Everyone Has A Right To Cool...In This Heat,” by Naomi Klein (Patterns)

• “Reimagining ownership and governance for carbon dioxide removal (CDR): exploring existing alternative models to advance equity and justice,” by Giulia Belotti, David Branigan, Holly Caggiano, and Sara Nawaz (Carbon Management)

• “Selling Stability: The Problem with Pitching “Climate Stabilization” as a New Category of Climate Response,” by Holly Jean Buck (African Tech Futures Lab)

• “Louisiana communities are left in the dark on toxic air — and industry helped keep it that way,” by Ames Alexander (Floodlight)

• “Naturalness catalyzes public support for carbon dioxide removal and low-carbon energy technologies,” by Gonzalez-Coffin et. al (Nature Communications Earth & Environment)

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It’s official: We’re turning on paid subscriptions today.

Here’s what won’t change: everything we publish will stay free.

Our polling data, our research briefs, this newsletter — all of it, no paywall, ever. Democratizing access to public opinion research is the whole point of what we do, and that shouldn’t depend on whether someone can pay for it.

But paid support is what lets us do more of it. It’s what funds more research and polling for more progressive partners. It lets us turn around rapid-response data amid a breaking news cycle. And it will help sustain the progressive movement for the fights — and wins — ahead.

Data for Progress is a non-profit, and small-dollar fundraising helps us to stay nimble, independent, and focused on the issues that matter most. There’s no sugarcoating it: Philanthropic dollars are incredibly hard to come by these days, and your support helps us keep the lights on.

If a few hundred of you decide to support this work, we can do more of exactly what you see every month in this newsletter. If you can, please consider becoming a paid subscriber — every bit helps.

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Just look at what your support has already made possible:

• Advancing the Green New Deal and Build Back Better, and ultimately passing the IRA. Our research helped elevate the Green New Deal, shaped the public narrative around Build Back Better, and helped pass and implement the Inflation Reduction Act.

• Delivering progressive thought leadership on climate, justice, labor, and infrastructure. We’re proudly progressive, and author our own research and thought leadership, particularly on climate issues where progressive leadership is lacking or needed to shape ambitious and equitable solutions. In particular, we’ve led on carbon dioxide removal, transmission, community and labor benefits on clean energy projects, and environmental justice.

• Equipping the climate movement with timely and accurate research. We collaborate with a wide range of climate partners, including the Center for Climate Integrity, Climate and Community Institute, Jobs to Move America, the Reliable Grid Project, Groundwork Collaborative, the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy, the Environmental Polling Consortium, and more. With these and other partners, we’re working to advance a working class climate agenda; make polluters — and profiteers — pay for climate damages; protect workers and communities amid the AI and the data center boom; and advance high road community and labor standards in the energy transition.

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— Catherine, Grace, and the Data for Progress team

🌈 HAPPY PRIDE 🌈

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.

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ISO a Chief Operating Officer …

We’re seeking a Chief Operating Officer (COO) to lead the internal operations and people systems that support our work across our 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). The COO will work closely with leadership across the organization on internal operations, capacity planning, labor relations, and financial management to ensure DFP has the structure, support, and internal coordination needed to meet the needs of the progressive community. Learn more and apply here.

… and a Development and Partnerships Director, Too

Our Development and Partnerships Director will lead Data for Progress’ fundraising and partnerships work across our 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). Reporting to the executive director, the development and partnerships director will play a central role in strengthening and growing the organization’s funding through foundation fundraising, major and small donor cultivation, institutional partnerships, and selected fee-for-service opportunities aligned with the organization’s mission and capacity. Learn more and apply here.

Introducing Ayseli!

Ayseli Karabekmez (she/her) is the climate program intern at Data for Progress, where she supports climate research, survey development, message testing, and data visualization efforts that inform climate action and community engagement.

Prior to joining the climate team, she worked as a research assistant in the environmental studies department at Colby College, contributing to projects that combined field experiments, literature reviews, and community interviews with a focus on environmental policy and sustainability. Ayseli is currently a rising senior at Colby College, where she is pursuing a double major in environmental science and economics.

Grace at Research + Experimentation in New Haven

Last week, senior climate strategist Grace Adcox traveled to Connecticut to attend the Research + Experimentation convening, hosted by the Climate Advocacy Lab and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

This multiday gathering brought together social scientists and climate movement practitioners to share knowledge and strategies, build collaborative relationships, and discuss shifting dynamics in the climate communication and policy landscapes. To this end, Grace presented research from Data for Progress survey partnerships completed over the last year, including projects on the relationship between the climate and cost-of-living crises, data center attitudes, and policy preferences for climate and environmental action.

Platner’s Energy Plan Is Popular Nationwide

• Our new polling finds Graham Platner’s new energy plan, “Take Back American Power: End Big Oil Price Gouging, Build Now” is widely popular nationwide. Platner, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, has proposed levying a 50% tax on oil and gas companies’ when they make windfall profits, then using any collected revenue to freeze or lower electricity rates for Americans. A strong bipartisan majority of voters (69%) support this proposal. Voters also broadly support other key planks of Platner’s plan, including:

  • Developing a strategic national stockpile of clean energy technologies to lower the cost of domestically manufactured components and products (69%);

  • Creating a National Energy Infrastructure Fund to fund new clean energy projects (68%); and

  • Reforming the permitting process to review and approve clean energy projects more quickly (67%).

  Read the full brief here.

Voters Support a Data Center Moratorium

• As Beltway X users debate the merits of a data center moratorium, we find that a majority of voters (63%), including 67% of Democrats, 66% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans, support pausing the construction of AI data centers for at least one year. Respondents were also asked whether they think the development of AI in the U.S. should be sped up, be slowed down, or remain the same. A plurality of voters (43%) think development should be slowed down, while 37% want the pace to remain the same and 13% want it sped up. Read the full brief here.

Climate Action Is a Popular Solution to the Affordability Crisis

By Grace Adcox

For months, groups across the political spectrum have assailed the left’s work on climate. On one side, we hear the right-wing refrain calling climate policy a “Green New Scam” that drives up costs — without acknowledging the higher costs families are already being asked to pay for home insurance, disaster recovery, and more. On the other side, there’s a growing narrative that claims climate is a niche or losing issue that alienates the working class, and that we should stop talking about it and focus solely on “affordability” instead.

Both approaches are out of step with the American voter. Recent polling from Data for Progress and the Climate and Community Institute reveals that voters don’t buy the claim that we shouldn’t — or can’t — tackle affordability and climate at the same time. In reality, voters not only care about climate, they also believe that climate and cost-of-living issues can and should be addressed together by policymakers.

Fifty-five percent of voters want to see elected officials take an approach that addresses both climate and affordability simultaneously, compared with only 35% who want to focus on costs alone. Core climate constituencies — including 73% of Democrats and 62% of voters under 45 — support this approach, but support extends beyond these traditional constituencies as well. A majority of Independents (56%) and even around 2 in 5 Republicans (38%) want to address the climate crisis along with the cost-of-living crisis.

Amid a multiyear cost-of-living crisis, voters are connecting the dots between climate and affordability. Voters are already feeling the financial impacts of the climate crisis — not the abstract future consequences of glacial melt or biodiversity loss, but rather the tangible kitchen-table impacts that keep families up at night, including:

• Rising home insurance costs and insurance companies exiting the market: 89% of voters want policymakers to take action on insurance affordability as extreme weather drives premiums to record highs.

• Compounding extreme weather risks: 91% of voters want policymakers to protect their homes and communities from the increasing frequency and costs of extreme weather disasters.

• Skyrocketing utility costs: 79% of voters want policymakers to invest in renewable energy sources, which the electorate already knows are cheaper than fossil alternatives.

Green Economic Populism can meet this moment of intersecting crises and deliver for the working class. The Climate and Community Institute’s Stop Greed, Build Green GEP agenda is designed to implement durable climate and economic solutions by building a winning and lasting political coalition.

Americans are tired of waiting for some miracle invisible hand of the market to lower household costs — they want their government to act. Fifty-six percent of voters want to see the government take a more active role in addressing climate change and the cost of living through public investment and stronger regulations. Just 26% believe that we should rely on the private sector to fix these problems.

By expanding the reach and capacity of the public sector, Green Economic Populism can deliver tangible relief to working families, curb corporate greed, and strengthen confidence in public institutions.

As November’s midterms approach, the stakes for climate, democracy, and the economy are clear. Candidates do not need to run away from climate to win over working-class voters. Instead, they can embrace a green economic populist framing, which 72% of voters say is a convincing reason to support a candidate.

It’s harmful and counterproductive to continue treating the climate and the economy as competing or conflicting issues, and voters don’t buy this false choice. We can deliver for the working class by leaning into an agenda that champions a future where everyone can afford to live.

You can find Grace’s Insights piece on our website here.

• “Bernie Sanders: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It.” by Bernie Sanders (New York Times)

• “Trumpian State Capitalism,” by Ilias Alami and Thea Riofrancos (Phenomenal World)

• “Why Renters Have to Fight for Their Right to Air Conditioning,” by Jeva Lange (Heatmap News)

• “The Heat of the Game,” by John Merrick (The BREAK–DOWN)

• “Community Benefit Agreements: A Tool for Building Stronger Democracies,” by Sameera Fazili, Pronita Gupta, and Doug Bloch (Non Profit Quarterly)

• “Experts: Why carbon removal needs a ‘major scale up’ to return warming to 1.5C,” by Cecilia Keating (Carbon Brief)

• “Golden Goal: A World Cup Magazine,” edited by Miguel Salazar, Alex Shephard, Billy Lennon, and Andrew Tan-Delli Cicchi

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.

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Are You Our Next Senior Polling Analyst?

• Senior Polling Analyst: We’re hiring a senior polling analyst to help expand our mission to empower movements using data. As a senior analyst, you’ll spend your days writing survey questions, analyzing data, and crafting polling memos. You’ll work closely with our polling team to run tests and prepare data products for the progressive movement. Apply here.

Betony Speaks on Center for Progressive Reform Webinar

Data for Progress’ senior resident fellow for climate, labor, and economic policy, Betony Jones, spoke on a recent Center for Progressive Reform webinar, “Exploring Community Benefits Alongside Former DOE Officials: Achievements, Challenges, and What Lies Ahead.” Betony discussed her time as the director of the Office of Energy Jobs and senior advisor for labor to the secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Biden administration, and particularly her role in developing the administration’s Community Benefits Plan (CBP) framework to tie together the administration’s climate, energy, labor, and DEIJ goals. You can find a recording of the webinar here.

Betony on Volts!

This month, Betony also joined Volts’ David Roberts to discuss her fantastic new paper with Joe Peck for the Roosevelt Institute, “The Receipts: The Untold and Underappreciated Outcomes of Biden’s Clean Energy Strategy.“ The Volts episode is one you can’t miss. Check out Roberts’ description of their conversation and listen to the episode here:

Conventional punditry loves the narrative that woolly-headed progressive standards over-burdened federal climate spending and slowed everything to a crawl. In this episode, I talk with Betony Jones about her time designing labor policies at the DOE and what she learned from interviewing dozens of companies that received federal funding. We explore the difference between bad rules and weak administrative capacity, how the DOE successfully streamlined century-old Davis-Bacon compliance, and why creating high-quality jobs is essential for global competitiveness.

Local Man Who Swims in Rock Creek Not Trusted to Handle a Public Health Crisis

• As any D.C. local knows, Rock Creek is awash with bacteria — the destination of stormwater and sewage alike when it rains. Yet that hasn’t stopped noted local germ theory-denier and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from ignoring the U.S. National Park Service’s ban on swimming and wading in Rock Creek. RFK fully submerged in the creek with his grandkids last year. Is it any surprise, then, that voters don’t trust the guy to handle a public health crisis? Amid hantavirus and ebola outbreaks, we find that a majority of voters (51%) — including 58% of Independents — say they don’t trust Kennedy to handle a public health crisis. Us too. Full polling brief here.

As Data Center and AI Boom Accelerates, Voters Support Pro-Worker Policies

• As some predict catastrophic job loss as AI replaces human workers, and others raise concerns about companies using AI to closely monitor workers’ activities, we find that a plurality of voters (27%) — including a plurality of Independents (36%) — trust labor unions most to protect workers from AI, followed by Democrats (23%), Republicans (19%), and employers (12%). In a split test, voters were asked whether they agree or disagree that employers using AI to monitor workers in all aspects of their jobs is a violation of “their privacy” (Split A) or “their freedom” (Split B). Voters agree that this is a violation of both — +55 and +45, respectively. Good news for union lovers? When voters are asked about their general levels of trust for five different groups, the only tested group that a majority of respondents trust is labor unions (59%). In comparison, less than half of voters trust Democrats (48%), Republicans (45%), corporations (36%), and politicians (27%). Full polling brief here.

Democratic Primary Voters in Prince George’s County Tell All on Housing

• New polling from Data for Progress and Greater Greater Washington finds that Democratic primary voters in Prince George’s County, Maryland, see room for improvement when it comes to the County Council’s handling of housing costs, age and quality of housing, and road safety, but few voters contact their members about issues in the county, especially when it comes to housing or zoning. Nearly all voters would like the Council and executives to redesign streets to improve road safety for all users, even if it slows drivers down, and 3 in 4 say the age and quality of housing is an issue. Democratic primary voters have clear priorities when it comes to lowering housing costs: Most respondents (57%) say it is more important to lower housing costs than to preserve neighborhood character. Younger voters (73%) and renters (64%) are even more likely to prioritize lower housing costs, and a majority of homeowners (52%) say the same. Full polling brief here.

Voters Demand Oil and Gas Accountability, Not Immunity

• In a new survey question fielded with the Center for Climate Integrity, we find robust bipartisan opposition to shielding oil and gas companies from climate accountability. Majorities of voters across party lines, including 71% of Independents and 53% of Republicans, are not interested in seeing federal policies that would give immunity to oil and gas companies from laws or lawsuits that would hold them accountable for climate damages. Read CCI’s press release on the survey here, and stay tuned for updates on the full survey soon.

Voters Report Pain at the Pump

At the beginning of 2026, Data for Progress’ polling revealed that voters have remained pessimistic about the economy since Donald Trump took office, despite his campaign promise to “make America affordable again.” Since then, Trump has launched an incredibly unpopular war, causing gas prices to surge across the country, all while continuing to defend his illegal and expensive tariff policy.

In longitudinal survey research from the last 16 months weighted to a likely 2026 midterm electorate, Data for Progress finds that voters report worsening conditions across most aspects of the economy in recent months, as well as sharp increases in spending on gas.

When asked whether they’ve paid more, about the same, or less for various goods over the past year, an overwhelming majority of voters have consistently reported paying more for groceries and food. However, recent jumps in gas prices have brought the two roughly even.

Notably, utility costs continue to be a pressing issue for voters, weighing even more heavily than household goods, healthcare, or housing costs.

To examine where rising costs are actually changing behavior, the survey asked voters which goods they are paying more for, and which goods they’ve cut back on or switched to a cheaper alternative.

The results demonstrate that some goods, like utilities, housing, and healthcare, are inelastic, in that voters report paying more but show little flexibility in buying less or opting for cheaper versions.

However, voters do report cutting back their spending in other categories, including household goods and groceries. Additionally, voters report surprising flexibility in terms of gas usage, replicating findings from other pollsters that demonstrate a significant percentage of Americans are cutting back on driving or travel.

This survey reveals that voters remain pessimistic about the economy, with majorities across the board reporting that most aspects of the economy are getting worse for people like themselves. Voters also report paying more for most goods, especially gas and groceries, leading many to cut back their spending in these areas. Growing economic pessimism only further underscores the importance of advancing economic policy that delivers greater affordability for working people.

Read the full polling brief here.

• ‼️NEW from former DFP fellow Saul Levin ‼️The Hum: A podcast on the people fighting AI data center projects. Listen and subscribe here.

• “Here’s How Democrats Should Talk About Climate Change,” by Kate Aronoff (The New Republic)

• “Economic Coordination and the Barriers Private Market Coordination Poses to Realizing a Progressive Agenda,” by Melanie Brusseler (Common Wealth)

• “Capacity Returns,” by Jeremy Wallace (The BREAK–DOWN)

• ”The Places Where Americans Are Deciding Between AC and Food,” by Jeva Lange (Heatmap)

• “‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds,” by Oliver Millman (The Guardian)

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Welcome to this special crossover issue of Data for Climate Progress with our friends at the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy!

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The Trust Deficit

There is a growing “trust gap” in American governance, with new polling from Data for Progress and UAW-CMGE showing that voters are significantly more likely to trust local (62%) or state (57%) officials to deliver high-quality public services over the federal government (41%). Even as President Donald Trump and elected officials in Washington appear indifferent to the financial struggles of everyday Americans, state and local governments are finding ways to maintain trust and deliver for their constituents despite tight budgets. On the same day that Trump admitted he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that his administration will protect public services while filling the city’s $12 billion budget deficit with a combination of Albany’s support, a streamlined budget, and new pied-à-terre revenue raisers. New York — and other states and municipalities — are demonstrating that you can balance budgets while still putting people first.

Even where the federal government has achieved landmark policy victories, the benefits often remain unclear to Americans. On the issue of climate action, there’s little doubt that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) constituted this country’s strongest attempt at green industrial policy. But because the IRA failed to clearly link its investment in clean energy deployment and manufacturing to immediate and widespread economic prosperity, it was overshadowed by the real affordability concerns that drove choices at the ballot box.

In fact, climate change was ranked as the second-to-last issue that Americans considered in the 2024 election. And, where the benefits of the IRA were recognized, credit was often attributed to governors rather than the Biden administration, because governors made efforts to address affordability concerns alongside these climate investments. Policy is iterative, so the government must learn from past successes and missteps. A nearly 40-year effort to dilute the bureaucracy and throttle public investment meant that when push came to shove, the federal government’s attempt to build a new climate economy went unrecognized. Building the coalition to drive climate policies requires a politics of public trust, and to do that, the government must show it’s uniquely capable of an affordability agenda that crosses renewable deployment, industrial manufacturing, public services, infrastructure investment, and housing.

What’s Contributing to Pessimistic Views of Public Sector Performance?

Americans perceive the government as being slow to deliver public services, unresponsive to the needs of the people, and lacking in transparency around how taxpayer money is spent. Many of those issues stem from the recent history of privatization of public services.

Since the 1970s and particularly after the election of President Ronald Reagan, privatization of public services has accelerated, with politicians ushering in austerity under the guise of “fiscal responsibility,” “efficiency,” or “attracting private investment.” These cuts have led to declines in the quality and speed — or the elimination altogether — of government services and infrastructure. Integrating a profit incentive and a commitment to shareholders above users can make private services a costly alternative to their public counterparts, with the private market often failing to deliver upon promised efficiency gains. Across sectors from public health to education, third-party middlemen and public-private partnerships that take over these services are often subject to less direct oversight and accountability than the public agencies formerly responsible, ceding space for underperformance and corruption to take root.

Our society is littered with the fallout: Energy rates spike higher in regions with investor-owned utilities, toll roads get pricier but no smoother while enriching successive private lessees, and passengers trying to shorten their time in airport security lines must shell out a fee to private pre-screening services. When finding out that New York City was paying $4 million to contract McKinsey to tell them trash may just be better off in trash bins, one starts to imagine where else that $12 billion deficit originated.

Symptomatic of these shifts, less than a third of voters say that they believe the government delivers efficiently or effectively for their household. Furthermore, only 29% of voters believe that the government expends taxpayer dollars on the right priorities. And, deficit concerns aside, voters are torn about whether they believe the government can provide high-quality public services even when well-funded and well-staffed (45% believe, 46% don’t believe).

Americans are facing unprecedented delays in mail delivery, enduring understaffed agencies handling tax returns and Social Security claims, and navigating chaotic, multihour airport security lines — all as their frustration with federal performance grows. These failings of the public sector fuel further austerity measures and budget cuts, creating a death spiral where tax dollars are repeatedly siphoned away from public entities to private contractors that monetize access to the same — though often inferior — services.

As a result, for many Americans, things just don’t seem to work like they used to.

All the while, Americans’ basic needs are increasingly going unmet. But despite its current shortcomings, the federal government has the ability to provide critical public resources, with features like universal service provision, that the private sector cannot or will not provide. Such public programs will be best positioned to address the economic, political, and social pressures wrought by climate change. And — critically — survey data from Data for Progress and the Climate and Community Institute finds that voters want to strengthen the public sector, with more than 4 in 5 saying it’s important that elected officials take action to do so.

Why We Need to Build Public Trust for the Energy Transition

If people don’t believe the federal government can deliver a mail-in vote or the newspaper, then they won’t believe it can deliver a multitrillion-dollar energy transition, or build the economy it takes to get there. Put another way, a government that asks its citizens to make the switch from gas-burning cars to EVs can develop much more credibility to do so if it first fills in the potholes on the roads they travel and provides quality public infrastructure to support the transition. Investing in high-quality, highly visible public services and infrastructure that address everyday needs is a necessary precondition to build political will for an economy-wide energy transition. In short, making the delivery of public goods a core priority of climate action can better facilitate the energy transition and ensure its benefits are evenly felt. Strengthening government capacity and putting the public sector in the driver’s seat will be necessary to deliver a transition that works in the public interest.

Fortunately, there are excellent examples of municipal and state leaders building the blueprint for this brand of governance. These elected officials offer hope that, by delivering on seemingly small, tangible, and visible priorities, government at all levels can build the trust necessary to tackle the bigger, more intractable challenges posed by issues like climate change.

Patching Potholes to Build Public Trust

In its first 100 days, Mamdani’s administration filled 100,000 potholes and shared nearly as many flashy promotional videos of NYC Department of Transit crews in the street doing this oft-undercelebrated work. Mamdani’s brand of pothole politics embraces the “sewer socialism” championed by elected officials in the 20th century, like Milwaukee Mayor Daniel Webster Hoan, and mirrors more recent efforts, like Virginia State Senator Danica Roem’s Fix Route 28 Now! platform and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s commitment to “fix the damn roads.”

Mamdani brought a renewed spotlight to these approaches in his 100-day address. In describing the early achievements of his administration, he defined a philosophy of pothole politics as the common thread, “where government is not too busy, not too self-important, not too mired in paperwork to fix the problems of this city, no matter their size.”

Mamdani is not the only municipal leader taking this approach. On the West Coast, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson had success centering her campaign around the city’s housing crisis, a top issue for Seattle voters. Before becoming mayor, Wilson coordinated the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition and helped pass a ballot measure to launch the publicly owned Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD). Since taking office, she has built on these efforts, working with the Seattle City Council to provide $115 million in funding to SSHD, which will expedite the timeline for the initial delivery of affordable housing units by developers, with Seattleites now able to expect them this year.

Beyond housing, Wilson campaigned on a promise to “unstick the ‘Late 8’ bus,” a notoriously unreliable — but crucial — high-ridership public transit route. Wilson prioritized its overhaul, promising to pave 13 more blocks of dedicated bus lanes to speed up and tangibly improve the route she and many other Seattleites rely on. This is the exact kind of initiative that can build goodwill with voters and a social license for future policy.

Pothole politics can pave the way for climate ambition. But pothole-level policies can also be climate policy. In Seattle, the SSHD is building energy-efficient housing and lowering utility bills. Wilson’s Late 8 overhaul and Mamdani’s fast and free bus pledge are making affordable, low-carbon transit more accessible, proving that the government can be trusted to deliver tangible, near-term improvements for taxpayers while also advancing longer-term climate action.

Conclusion

From New York to Seattle, Americans have been disenchanted by their government — losing hope and direct evidence that government can actually deliver for working people. The challenges posed by climate change and the urgent need to decarbonize are immense and complex, and to solve them, we need a trusted public sector guiding the way for the common good. But a successful, well-resourced public sector needs an electorate that believes in it.

Government can and must take lessons from pothole politics: Focusing on basic quality-of-life issues and services that deliver broad public benefits can enable the political will to make the big investments required to ensure a prosperous energy transition.

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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.

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Green Economic Populism: A Working-Class Climate Agenda

• A new report from the Climate and Community Institute and survey from Data for Progress demonstrate that voters are increasingly connecting the dots between extreme weather and their straining bank accounts, and want policymakers to do something about it. Fortunately, this data also shows voters see a path to deliver solutions that simultaneously respond to both the climate and cost-of-living crises: 70% of voters believe that effective climate policies can also lower the cost of living, and 55% want policymakers to pursue policy agendas that tackle both issues in one fell swoop. In its agenda and white paper, CCI describes this dual-pronged policymaking framework as Green Economic Populism. By pairing kitchen table interventions like free transit and home insurance rate caps with a laser focus on corporate accountability and a fortified public sector, Green Economic Populism aims to deliver ambitious climate progress while driving down costs for working-class people. See Grist’s coverage of the agenda and polling here.

No Clean Energy Cold War With China

• With China outpacing the rest of the world in the development of clean energy and climate technologies, new polling from DFP examines U.S. likely voter attitudes toward China in the context of climate change, clean energy technologies, and the energy transition. We find that a plurality of voters (47%), including majorities of Democrats (58%), Independents (52%), and voters under 45 (55%), agree more with a statement saying, “We’ll make progress on clean energy technologies faster if the United States prioritizes cooperating with China on the development and manufacturing of these technologies,” while 39% say we’ll make faster progress if we prioritize competition. What’s more, despite China’s global leadership in climate technologies, when asked whether they think the U.S. or China is the global leader in developing clean energy technologies, a slim majority of Americans (52%) choose the U.S. Read the polling brief here.

Biden-Era Clean Energy Awards Escape Purgatory

• This month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright sent a list of 1,950 Biden-era clean energy awards that have been “retained” or “modified” by the Trump administration, giving the green light to projects like the Project Cypress direct air capture hub and 13 previously canceled Grid Resilience and Innovation Program projects. As long on-hold projects finally got the go-ahead this month, DFP released a new tool to better identify known community and labor agreements on major Department of Energy awards. The Labor and Community Benefits Agreements Map shows known agreements on Biden-era DOE investments exceeding $50M. The tool complements DFP fellow Betony Jones’ new paper for the Roosevelt Institute, The Receipts: The Untold and Underappreciated Outcomes of Biden’s Clean Energy Strategy. Betony and her co-author, Joe Peck, highlight four key takeaways from an analysis of Joe Biden’s energy strategy:

1. Biden-era clean energy investments “crowded in” private capital;

2. Wage requirements ensured jobs in these communities paid well;

3. Incentive-based apprenticeship rules helped build the workforce needed to make this strategy real; and

4. Labor and community standards resulted in better jobs and stronger projects garnering less opposition.

AMOC Should’ve Been Front Page News This Earth Month

By Catherine Fraser

A whopping 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. New polling from Data for Progress finds that more than 60% of U.S. voters say Earth Day is important to them personally, including majorities of Democrats (73%), Independents (60%), and Republicans (53%).

Support for protecting the Earth’s air and water is also high across party lines, with a strong majority of voters (66%) agreeing that ensuring every community has access to clean air and water should be a top priority for the U.S.

Despite broad public support for protecting clean air and water, the Trump administration has touted its rollbacks of environmental rules as the “biggest deregulatory action” in U.S. history, and has sought to reverse much of the climate action taken by the Biden administration — slashing funding and programs that incentivized clean energy, ending the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in certain sectors, and pushing fossil fuel production over renewable energy.

These actions couldn’t come at a worse time. With the world on the verge of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, each incremental rise in temperature further accelerates our race toward cascading and irreversible climate tipping points. New research this month shows that, given current levels of warming, one such tipping point — the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC — is more likely than previously thought.

Forget “The Shining” or the villain from that one scary movie — the collapse of AMOC is what should keep you up at night. AMOC is a critical ocean current that sends warm water from the Southern Ocean near Antarctica northward through the Atlantic Ocean, cooling as it reaches the Arctic, where the current then begins to return the water to the Southern Hemisphere. The current is responsible for rainfall in the tropics and brings warm water to Northern Europe, enabling notoriously rainy weather in the UK and Ireland, as well as the region’s mild winters.

Needless to say, its collapse could bring catastrophic consequences. Winters could see temperatures as low as -4°F in the UK and -54°F in Oslo, Norway, where winter temperatures currently average 39°F and 32°F, respectively. Meanwhile, the typically rainy tropics could dry up, disrupting growing seasons and livelihoods. Here in the U.S., the East Coast could see rapid sea level rise and stronger hurricanes.

I’m not trying to be a climate doomer. Rather, I want to be clear-eyed about the consequences of inaction or delay — and hope you do, too.

It’s only by facing the hard truths and the terrifying potential of climate overshoot that we can act with ambition and conviction to limit catastrophic warming.

And, this Earth Month, we know that’s what voters want, too. Sixty-eight percent of voters — majorities of Democrats, Independents, and, yes, Republicans — want the U.S. to take ambitious action on climate change, even if other countries don’t.

Read the full polling brief here.

• Our friends at the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy (CMGE) are on Substack, check out The Just Transmission here

• “Democrats May Believe Climate Change Is Real. They Don’t Act Like It.” by Kate Aronoff (The New Republic)

• “The Case For Public Factories,” by Ganesh Sitaraman and Joel Dodge (Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator)

• “Trump Brings Back Direct Air Capture Hubs,” by Emily Pontecorvo (Heatmap)

• “The Receipts: The Untold and Underappreciated Outcomes of Biden’s Clean Energy Strategy,” by Betony Jones and Joe Peck (Roosevelt Institute)

• “The Green New Deal has evolved. Now it’s all about ‘affordability.’” by Kate Yoder (Grist)

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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.

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Focus Groups on California’s Battery Boom

DFP’s Anika Dandekar and Grace Adcox joined the Reliable Grid Project for a webinar to present our findings on a series of focus groups in California. We hosted three focus groups in California — in Orange and Ventura counties, the Central Valley, and the Central Coast — to understand attitudes on the state’s growing battery storage industry, especially in the wake of the 2025 Moss Landing fire. We find that most Californians know little about existing battery storage projects, and our subsequent report identifies opportunities to leverage trusted actors and local familiarity with existing, household-level renewable energy technologies to inform Californians of the benefits, costs, and risks of utility-scale battery storage projects. You can read the full report here.

One More Reason To Be Anti-War: Its Climate Impacts

• Already widely unpopular among U.S. voters, the war on Iran becomes even more unfavorable in the eyes of voters when they learn of its climate impacts. According to research from the Climate and Community Institute, the first two weeks of the war produced 5 million metric tons of carbon emissions — more than Iceland produces in an entire year. Much of these emissions came from destroyed buildings, burning fuel facilities, and military attacks. After learning about these climate impacts, 63% of Democrats – 88% of whom already view the war unfavorably – say they have a worse opinion of the Trump administration’s decision to take military action against Iran.

New Yorkers to Big Oil: Pay Up

• Our new polling with the Center for Climate Integrity finds that voters across New York state are experiencing rising housing and home insurance costs firsthand, with more than half (54%) saying that their home or renters insurance bill has increased in the last year, including 68% of homeowners. Beyond just rising home insurance rates, nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers (64%) — and 79% of Democrats — report that instances of extreme weather have become more frequent over the last five years. Who’s to blame? New Yorkers say Big Oil. Nearly 7 in 10 New York voters (69%) say large oil and gas companies are very or somewhat responsible for climate change and worsening extreme weather disasters. This includes 85% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and even a slim majority of Republicans (52%). New York voters are ready to make polluters pay. Two-thirds support legislation that would allow the state attorney general to sue the oil and gas industry to recover home insurance cost increases — rather than letting insurers pass those costs onto New Yorkers. Read the full brief here.

Still Talking About Data Centers

This month, we released a new poll with Groundwork Collaborative which explores attitudes toward electricity prices, utility companies, and data centers. We find that two-thirds of voters (66%) say their monthly electricity bill has gone up in the last year, with majorities blaming utility company profits, the energy demand of large energy users (like data centers) and compensation for utility company executives.

Though a slim majority of voters (51%) say that they’ve seen, read, or heard “nothing at all” about AI data centers being built in their community, a bipartisan majority (57%) would oppose a data center if it was proposed in their community. When asked about their perceptions of potential impacts of AI data centers on their community, voters see AI data centers as having mostly negative impacts on their community, particularly in terms of cost of electric and water bills, cleanliness of local water, noise pollution, and the reliability of electricity.

That said, voters are divided on whether data centers will bring jobs, but largely think that AI data centers will raise their utility bills by increasing demand and thus making electricity more expensive. To reduce the impact of new data centers on utility bills, voters think requiring AI data centers to build their own dedicated power plant would be most effective.

Finally, we asked whether electric utilities should be publicly or privately run, and a majority of voters (58%) — a +25 margin — say that the public sector should run them. This includes majorities of Democrats (65%) and Independents (61%).

Our friends at Groundwork said it best: To lower prices, voters want the public sector to play a larger role in modernizing and running utilities and for federal policymakers to rein in corporate actors like AI companies that make electricity and gas more expensive.

Read Groundwork’s write up here and the crosstabs here.

• “5m tonnes of CO2 emitted in just 14 days of US war on Iran, analysis finds,” by Damien Gayle (The Guardian)

• “The Energy Supply Shock of the Iran War Changes Everything,” by Matthew Zeitlin (Heatmap)

• “The fate of fossil fuel systems in the “mid-transition”,” by David Roberts (Volts)

• “In an Election Decided by Acreage, Data Centers Are Shifting the Balance of Power, by Jeva Lange (Heatmap)

• “Latin America’s lithium triangle is now in the hands of the right,” by Thea Riofrancos (Financial Times)

Check Out DFP’s Ryan O’Donnell on The New Republic’s Podcast:

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.

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Three Focus Groups on Battery Storage in California

In late January, Data for Progress’ Grace Adcox, Anika Dandekar, and Charlotte Scott made a quick jaunt out west to hold focus groups in Santa Cruz, Fresno, and Orange and Ventura counties, California.

The groups aimed to understand how Californians in areas of the state where proposed and existing battery storage projects are rapidly proliferating view such projects, particularly in the wake of the Moss Landing fire and with rising opposition to battery storage.

Interested in focus groups? Curious about DFP’s qualitative research offerings? Learn more here or drop us a line.

2026 DFP Staff Retreat ✅

While we’ve been away from the climate newsletter, we’ve been hard at work planning out how Data for Progress will advance progressive priorities in 2026 and onward since meeting for our annual staff retreat in February. Here’s to another year of delivering the progressive movement with the tools it needs to win by measuring — and moving — public opinion.

Voters Want New Federal Investment in Housing and Infrastructure

• New DFP polling finds broad public support for the government to take a more active role in supporting new economic development, with a strong majority of voters (71%) believing the federal government should take a more active role in shaping the U.S. economy. In fact, voters support the federal government taking a more active role in growing infrastructure projects (81%), housing (80%), transportation networks (74%), and clean energy projects (72%) in their community. And, as members of Congress consider different policies that would make it faster to undergo the review and approval processes for different types of energy projects, a plurality of voters (43%) say “the government should speed up these processes only for renewable energy projects like wind and solar, but not for fossil fuel energy projects, like oil and gas,” while 38% say “the government should speed up these processes for all types of energy projects.” Read the full brief here.

What We’re Tracking (and Whom We’re Reading) in 2026

Hello, dear readers. We’re starting off the first newsletter of the year by sharing some musings on current trends in the climate discourse that we’re following and by spotlighting who we’ll be reading to make sense of it all. If the first two months of 2026 are any indication, it should be quite a year. Without further ado, here are three trends we’re tracking in 2026:

1. Data centers, data centers, data centers.

We expect data centers to continue to dominate the discourse on energy demand, grid reliability, and affordability. We’ll be following these threads and thinkers:

After last year’s release of Advait Arun’s blockbuster report, “Bubble or Nothing: Data Center Project Finance,” we’ll be closely watching to see if the AI bubble bursts. And following Arun and the Center for Public Enterprise’s work. You can find Arun and CPE on X.

With backlash to data center buildout constantly in the news, we’ll be curious to see how opposition to data center siting develops throughout the year. On that front, Jael Holzman at Heatmap News is 1 of 1 when it comes to reporting on the opposition to data centers and clean energy across the country. You can follow her work via her newsletter, The Fight, and on X.

And, finally, we’ll be tracking how voter sentiment and awareness of data centers changes this year. Last year, we published polling with WE ACT for Environmental Justice, finding that nearly half of voters (45%) said they haven’t heard enough to formulate an opinion on data centers.

What’s more, 62% of voters said they’d heard “nothing at all” about the construction of these facilities in their state. We’ll keep an eye on attitudes toward data centers this year and will keep you updated!

2. The economy and rising costs.

It’s no secret that the rising cost of living and affordability is front of mind for pretty much everyone right now, and we’re partnering up with our friends at Climate and Community Institute to continue our joint Popular Solutions newsletter, where we’ll advance green economic populism and explore popular climate policies that get at the heart of the cost-of-living crisis.

We’ll also be keeping a close eye on the economy this year via our friends at Common Wealth, who launched a new monthly newsletter, Forces of Production, last month. Forces of Production will “provide monthly tracking on the supply side data of the U.S. economy … to contribute a public image of the supply side to support and sharpen ongoing conversations about industrial policy, public ownership, and new approaches to holding down the cost of living.”

For those of us who struggled through college macroeconomics (ahem – that’s me, Catherine), the newsletter will be mandatory reading to make sense of the economy and how we meaningfully address the cost-of-living crisis. Read the first issue of Forces of Production and subscribe here.

3. Climate policy under new New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

For our team, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC mayoral race ranks in the top five moments of 2025. We’re eager to see how his first term plays out, particularly his commitments on municipal grocery stores, housing, and public transit.

We’ll be closely following the work of the New York City Policy Forum, a new initiative from Phenomenal World, Climate and Community Institute, and the Fiscal Policy Institute focused on key issues facing NYC. They’ve already released essential pieces on governance in NYC, and we especially recommend JW Mason’s piece on affordable housing. Follow and subscribe to NYCPF.

• ”The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet,” by Ann Pettifor (Verso Books)

• “The Real Cost of Affordable Housing,” by JW Mason (New York City Policy Forum)

• From our very own, Catherine Fraser, with Noah Gordon: “Capitalists Want You to Stop Worrying About Climate Change” (Jacobin)

• “I Toured America With My Band. It Changed How I Understand the Energy Transition.” by Jael Holzman (Heatmap)

• “Trump’s Illegal Invasion of Venezuela Forebodes an Environmental Disaster,” by Patrick Bigger (Climate and Community Institute)

• “What’s behind your sky-high power bill: A region-by-region breakdown,” by Naveena Sadasivam and Clayton Aldern (Canary Media and Grist)

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.

Subscribe now

We’re not the type of organization that likes to bombard our readers with fundraising asks, but we gotta say: High-quality public opinion research is expensive. In order to fund all of the important projects that we have in store for 2026 — from surveys to focus groups to in-depth message testing — we need your help.

In the spirit of giving, can you commit to making a monthly donation to DFP in the new year?

Make a monthly donation to DFP

With your help, 2026 will be our best year yet. We’re not giving up on climate — we’re recommitting to empowering movement partners with the data they need to fight back against authoritarianism and win. Together, we can create a more equitable future.

Introducing … Jenna Scarbrough

Hello, hello! I’m Jenna Scarbrough (she/her), and I recently joined Data for Progress as a polling analyst. I have a background in public opinion research and political communication. My previous work has focused on providing effective, positive, and values-based messaging for progressive advocacy groups working on a variety of issues such as health, housing, and climate. I’m currently based in Portland, Oregon, but I grew up in South Dakota, and I’m grateful for how my rural upbringing has shaped my views on land conservation, economic justice, and community building.

Outside of work, I enjoy learning the banjo, biking around Portland, and maxing out my library card. I’m excited to bring my curiosity and love of learning everywhere I go — especially to Data for Progress.

If you would like to learn more about my work, my interests, how to stop doomscrolling, or how we can mobilize a cynical public, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me at jenna@dataforprogress.org.

DFP @ EPC

• DFP’s Grace Adcox presented new research on global climate leadership and on party trust on climate costs and the cost of living at the Environmental Polling Consortium’s fourth quarterly briefing, capping off another successful year of collaborations with the EPC, including fielding and presenting another wave of the EPC Community Poll and giving presentations at three of the quarterly briefings.

USEER Report Bonanza

• This month, Data for Progress hosted a webinar bringing together organizations who’ve all authored supplemental reports to the Department of Energy’s annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), featuring speakers from Data for Progress, Inclusive Economics, E2, IREC, World Resources Institute, and BW Research Partners. You can find the supplemental report that Data for Progress sponsored here and a recording of the webinar here.

Introducing … Your 2025 Data for Climate Progress Wrapped

As we close out the year, the Data for Progress Climate Team is taking a moment to reflect on our learnings from the past 12 months of public opinion research. Across surveys, focus groups, community workshops, and interviews, we’ve seen that, despite federal setbacks, support for climate action remains strong. The specific dynamics of climate policy may have shifted, but the public is unwavering in its support for energy and environmental policies that address the cost-of-living crisis, deliver clean air and water, protect the most vulnerable communities from the impacts of climate change, and meet the urgency of climate change and climate mitigation needs.

You can find a text version of — and links for — our 2025 Data for Climate Progress Wrapped here.

All Around Colorado in Six Days

This past summer, Data for Progress spent six days in Colorado, hosting workshops in three Colorado coal communities — Pueblo, the West End, and Craig. We logged over 16 hours in the car and over 900 miles on the road — check out our driving route:

Since publishing our Progressive Platform for Carbon Removal in 2021, we’ve held 15 workshops across the country – including in Beaver County, Pennsylvania; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Port Arthur, Texas; Visalia, California; and Rock Springs, Wyoming. These three workshops in Colorado were the latest in this series.

With the state of Colorado planning to phase out coal-fired power by 2031, we first wanted to understand community perspectives on the coal industry and its planned phaseout, as well as attitudes toward the potential development of carbon removal, namely direct air capture (DAC), as a new industry that could help fill the economic void left by coal. To complement these workshops, we fielded a statewide survey of Colorado voters to assess overall views toward the energy transition and carbon removal.

These findings and recommendations identify key opportunities for Colorado, and states interested in following Colorado’s footsteps, to both decarbonize and phase out fossil fuels, and deliver a just transition for workers and communities via bold policy, strong public investment, and deep partnerships between workers, communities, and state and local governments.

Colorado’s ambitious climate goals — including its plan to phase out coal, first-of-its-kind Office of Just Transition, and roadmap to develop carbon removal — present a tremendous opportunity to build policy and momentum around decarbonization, carbon removal, and a just transition. Importantly, no industry will be a one-to-one replacement of coal — or any other fossil fuel — in terms of jobs, economic benefits, and more. But, by asking communities themselves what they envision for their futures, we can collectively build a future that supports workers and communities, and ensures everyone has access to dignity, both in work and in life. Our work in Colorado aimed to do just that.

You can read the full report here.

(No, really, you should read the full report). You can find the executive summary here.

• Check out the BREAK—DOWN’s 2025 books of the year

• “The quick and shameful death of Biden’s biggest policy,” by Kate Aronoff (The New Republic)

• “Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature,” by Alyssa Battistoni (Princeton University Press)

• “A backup plan for the AI boom,” by Advait Arun (Heatmap)

• “As solar booms and coal fades, Greece’s mining region struggles to adapt,” by Dan McCarthy (Canary Media)

• “Climate change is already costing U.S. households up to $900 per year,” by Matthew Zeitlin (Heatmap)

Have you enjoyed our monthly newsletter this year? Do you love seeing polling that highlights the popularity of green economic populism? Are you curious to learn more about how we can break through the noise and reach the voters who decide elections?

If so, please consider making an end-of-year contribution to DFP:

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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.

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That’s Mayor-Elect Zohran M-A-M-D-A-N-I to You

November was a blue wave, all right. Let’s recap, shall we? Democratic socialists Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson won their respective mayoral races in New York City and Seattle. Governors-elect Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger ran away with their races in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively. Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson won the biggest margins for Democrats statewide in Georgia in over 20 years in the Public Service Commission race. Or as Politico put it: Democrats didn’t just rebound. They dominated.

What gives? You’re in luck. We teamed up with our friends at Fossil Free Media on a quick election postmortem. We argue that — across the board — voters chose leaders who are ready to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. From Virginia to New Jersey to New York City, affordability defined the 2025 election. Energy bills, housing costs, and insurance premiums have climbed faster than wages, and voters rewarded candidates who promised to do something about it. But don’t just take our word for it:

• Sherrill won in New Jersey after pledging to freeze electricity rates and challenge utility monopolies.

• In Virginia, Spanberger became the state’s first woman governor by vowing to make data center operators, which are some of the fastest-growing electricity users in the country, help cover the costs of grid upgrades.

• And Georgia voters flipped the two seats on the state’s utility board after six consecutive rate hikes tied to costly fossil fuel and nuclear projects.

For Democrats, the path forward isn’t to talk less about climate, but to translate it for voters — by connecting climate to affordability and kitchen table issues more directly.

Read the full piece with FFM here.

White House Whitehouse Showed Up at COP30

As COP30 wraps up in Brazil this week — marking 10 years since the landmark Paris Climate Agreement — the world is on track to overshoot Paris’ target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet, despite the urgent need for global cooperation to sharply curb emissions and finance the transition to clean energy, one nation is noticeably absent at COP30 negotiations: the United States.

The Trump administration didn’t send a single representative to the negotiations. Instead, longtime climate champion Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was the sole representative of the U.S. federal government at COP30 (Thank you, Senator!).

Despite Trump’s anti-climate agenda and refusal to participate in COP30, new polling from Data for Progress finds that after a year of climate setbacks, a majority of voters still think that the U.S. should lead on climate action, regardless of how other countries address the issue.

When asked to choose between two statements, a strong majority (65%) of voters prefer one that says that the United States should take ambitious action on climate change, even if others do not, including majorities of Democrats and Independents, as well as a plurality of Republicans.

At a time when some are advancing a new form of climate denialism, encouraging the U.S. to give up on meeting Paris’ 1.5 C – or even 2 C – target and kick emissions cuts down the road, we find that a plurality of voters (41%) — including a majority (63%) of Democrats — want countries to take urgent action to reduce emissions so the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s target.

And while the world will need significant investments in carbon dioxide removal and other climate technologies to limit catastrophic warming, there is only one true solution to the climate crisis: rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.

We find that a majority of voters (55%) support a global phaseout of fossil fuels, like coal and oil, to address climate change. And this support is robust, with more than half of voters (52%) still in support after reading supporter and opposition statements about phasing out fossil fuels. What’s more, when it comes to the U.S. making its own national commitment to phase out fossil fuels, voters are similarly supportive, with 54% of voters, including 74% of Democrats and 54% of Independents, in support of the U.S. phasing out fossil fuels by 2100.

During an admittedly discouraging time for climate advocates like ourselves, we cannot lose our resolve and unwavering commitment to addressing the root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.

A fossil fuel phaseout means lost profits and an end to business as usual for fossil fuel companies, and it also means that some of us indulging in luxury emissions may need to make sacrifices and uncomfortable decisions during phaseout.

These are realities we must face on the path to a climate-secure world, where the Global North takes on its role in creating — and redressing — the climate crisis, where fossil fuel profits don’t take precedence over human lives, and where we put the good of everyone above that of a wealthy few.

With clear-eyed conviction and a steady focus on fossil fuel phaseout, we can build a better future for everyone on this planet. We owe it to ourselves, future generations, and those most vulnerable to climate change.

Full brief here.

• “Thousands hit streets of Belém to call for action during crucial Cop30 summit, by Jonathan Watts and Dharna Noor (The Guardian)

• “What Zohran Mamdani’s Win Means for Climate Politics,” by Colin Kinniburgh (New York Focus)

• “Mamdani’s First Budget,” by Andrew Perry (Phenomenal World)

• “Utilizing Economic Power to Manage the Energy and Climate Transitions: A Roadmap for State Policymakers,” by Jordan Haedtler and John Kostyack (Climate Cabinet)

• “Trump Wants to Prop Up Coal Plants. They Keep Breaking Down.,” by Matthew Zeitlin (Heatmap)

• “Here’s the Data Showing Why Dems Must Keep Talking About Climate,” by Aaron Regunberg (The New Republic)

Welcome to this special crossover issue of Data for Climate Progress with our friends at Fossil Free Media!

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Voters Chose Leaders Ready to Tackle the Cost-of-Living Crisis

The results are in from Tuesday night, and across the country, voters made it clear they want leaders who take the cost-of-living crisis seriously and are willing to stand up to the powerful interests driving prices higher.

From Virginia to New Jersey to New York City, affordability defined this election night. Energy bills, housing costs, and insurance premiums have climbed faster than wages, and voters rewarded candidates who promised to do something about it.

The Cost-of-Living Election

Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill won in New Jersey after pledging to freeze electricity rates and challenge utility monopolies. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger became the state’s first woman governor by vowing to make data center operators, which are some of the fastest-growing electricity users in the country, help cover the costs of grid upgrades. In Georgia, voters flipped two seats on the state’s utility board after six consecutive rate hikes tied to costly fossil fuel and nuclear projects.

These results come as families face rising costs across nearly every basic expense. A new analysis from the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that utilities in 49 states have already raised or proposed to raise rates within the next two years, adding nearly $90 billion to household bills by 2028. Home insurance premiums are up 24% in just three years. And the climate crisis is multiplying those pressures, as storms, floods, and wildfires are damaging power infrastructure faster than it can be rebuilt, with utilities passing on those costs straight to customers.

The throughline in all of these elections? Voters are feeling squeezed, and they want leaders who recognize that affordability and corporate accountability are the same fight.

What the Data Shows

Polling from Data for Progress shows that the affordability crisis is shaping nearly every political conversation.

Nearly two-thirds of voters (62%) say their utility bills are higher than a year ago, including majorities across parties. The cost of living remains voters’ top concern, and Donald Trump’s promise to cut prices “by half” has failed to materialize. In fact, his rollback of clean energy projects and embrace of fossil fuels have only made energy more expensive.

For years, fossil fuel companies and their political allies have tried to convince voters that it’s clean energy driving prices up. But the data and public opinion tell a different story. Only 5% of voters blame renewables for rising costs, while most say it’s either utility companies increasing their profits (38%) or large corporations driving up energy demand (14%).

Democrats have a narrow trust gap on “the cost of living” (R+1) but a commanding +14-point advantage on climate change and a +6 advantage on renewable energy development, issues that voters increasingly associate with lower prices and energy security. Polling also shows that wind and solar remain among the most popular energy sources, and that voters see them as the cheapest forms of power.

In short, voters see what’s happening and know utility companies and corporations are driving up prices, prioritizing their own profits, and blocking solutions. Democrats have an opportunity to connect their clean energy trust advantage to a broader affordability message and prove that they actually have a plan to bring costs down.

Clean, Cheap, and Fair

Across the board, the data shows that clean energy is part of the solution to the affordability crisis in America. A recent Politico study found that states with higher shares of renewables tend to have lower electricity prices, while regions still dependent on volatile fossil fuels see the biggest spikes. Every extreme weather disaster and fuel price shock compounds the pressure on working families trying to pay bills month-to-month, and utilities have few tools to address an aging grid and volatile electricity markets beyond raising rates.

Policies that pair clean energy investments with accountability for polluters, like the incredibly popular climate superfund laws passed in New York and Vermont, offer a practical path forward. These laws create dedicated funds, paid into by the companies most responsible for emissions, which in turn can be used to help states modernize their grids, repair disaster damage, and protect consumers without raising taxes.

A New Economic Story

Voters came out in record numbers and rewarded candidates who spoke honestly about how the economy really works, named corporate power as part of the affordability crisis, and offered concrete ways to bring costs down.

For Democrats, the path forward isn’t to talk less about climate, but to connect climate to affordability and kitchen table issues more directly. The same investments that cut emissions also stabilize prices, reduce dependence on volatile fuels, and keep communities resilient when disaster strikes. Clean energy is one of the few places where voters still see a meaningful difference between the parties, and it’s an area where Democrats have voters’ trust. Now, Democrats must prove that trust is deserved, by offering an agenda that delivers lower bills, modern infrastructure, and real relief for working families.

For more information, read DFP Insights.

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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.

Subscribe now

Love this newsletter? Want to support our work? Donate here:

Support our work

Meet DFP’s New Executive Director, Ryan O’Donnell

It’s official: Our next executive director is Ryan O’Donnell. Ryan has been with DFP since the very early days. He brings over two decades of experience in the progressive field — notably through his tenure with SEIU and Obama’s 2008 presidential run, and advising numerous partners over the years, including AOC’s first bid for Congress and the Working Families Party.

At DFP, Ryan has played a pivotal role in strengthening our methodological rigor, ensuring our accuracy, and leading innovative polling on topics other firms are often unwilling to touch.

In the three years we’ve worked together, Ryan has been a constant supporter of DFP’s climate team. We’re thrilled to continue our work under his leadership to advance a green, economic populist agenda for climate.

In a time of spiraling climate and political chaos, and calls in some quarters for moderation, ceding ground, or shying away from era-defining issues like climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, and the genocide in Gaza, we’re proud to announce a new executive director who is committed to building a progressive movement rooted in data, integrity, and ambition.

But don’t just take our word for it … hear it from Ryan himself.

And go follow Ryan on Twitter and Bluesky.

More Public Transit for the Twin Cities

• Earlier this month, our poll with Move Minnesota was featured in the Minnesota StarTribune, finding that 1 in 3 Twin Cities residents are curious about being car-free. What’s more, we find that 83% of Twin Cities adults agree that robust public transit options are good for everyone, and that more than 60% of residents already consider public transit for certain trips. Even if Twin Cities adults don’t use public transit, 55% know someone who personally benefits from using it. Among Black and under 45 respondents, this number jumps to 74% and 64%, respectively, underscoring the importance of public transport among residents of color and younger residents, and of ensuring that the Twin Cities offer equity in mobility for everyone. Read the full report from Move Minnesota and Data for Progress here.

Amid Overshoot, Climate Clarity at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Earlier this month, DFP’s Catherine Fraser joined a panel discussing a new Carnegie Endowment piece by Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Noah Gordon, and Milo McBride, titled Climate Clarity: On the Future of Climate Action in the United States. The piece identifies a dangerous rising tide of “new denialism” in U.S. climate politics. New denialism, in the authors’ words, is “rooted in the idea that decarbonization is unrealistic and expensive, and that the U.S. can safely double down on fossil fuels while adapting to climate hazards.” In a rebuke of this new denialism, Catherine shared what our latest polling indicates about voter attitudes toward climate change and discussed her recent piece in Common Dreams critiquing the Council on Foreign Relations’ turn to new denialism via its “Climate Realism Initiative.”

With the United Nations’ António Guterres sounding the alarm this week that humanity will overshoot the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C climate target, resulting in “devastating consequences” for people and the planet, let us be unequivocal: We must immediately move to cut emissions and phase out fossil fuels.

At DFP, we urge the climate movement to not heed the calls to give up, tackle emissions cuts down the road, or lump all of our eggs into a basket of supposed climate fixes — like carbon removal or geoengineering — that treat symptoms, not root causes, of climate change.

Climate change is an existential threat. There is no time for delay, denial, or giving up — we owe future generations and those most vulnerable to climate change an unwavering commitment to emissions cuts and the end of fossil fuels.

Talking Barriers to Local Renewable Energy Siting

DFP’s Grace Adcox presented findings from our recent report with Clean Tomorrow about state policymaker perspectives on renewable energy siting to the Siting Clean Collaborative. We surveyed and interviewed state-level siting policy stakeholders across 17 states, including elected legislators and agency staff.

Stakeholders reported facing significant obstacles in the siting process related to community opposition and misinformation, as well as “direct or institutional barriers,” such as restrictive local ordinances and difficulty securing transmission grid connections.

To address these barriers, policymakers identified a series of policies and tools to improve siting, including mandating or incentivizing siting standards for local government adoption, prohibiting overly restrictive ordinances, and developing playbooks of best practices and case studies of successful policies. You can read the full report here.

Democrats Have the High Ground on Energy Prices — if They’re Willing to Take It

By Grace Adcox and Abby Springs

In a speech made at the United Nations General Assembly last month, President Donald Trump described climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” while slamming efforts by European nations to develop clean energy.

But here at home, energy prices have risen at more than double the rate of inflation. In Data for Progress polling, 62% of voters report paying more for their utility bills now than last year, including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.

The cost of living was a key driver of Trump’s victory last November, and remains the top issue for voters nearly a year later. But not only has Trump failed to lower prices, his war on clean energy has pushed the cost of energy bills up even further.

To demonstrate to voters that they’re the party with a plan to make life more affordable, Democrats will have to prove that they are actually tackling the cost of living ahead of the 2026 midterms. Democrats need an agenda to combat high energy prices — one that leverages their popular positions on clean energy, centers economic populism, and calls out the bad actors driving up utility costs.

Democrats Can Leverage Their Advantage on Climate and Energy

Currently, neither party has a significant trust advantage on “electric utility bills” (D+1) or “the cost of living” (R+1). However, Democrats hold a +14-point trust advantage on “climate change” and a +6-point advantage on “renewable energy development.”

That trust advantage gives Democrats solid ground from which to launch an attack. Due to the strong popularity of wind and solar energy, as well as voter perceptions that these are the cheapest sources of energy, Republicans will have a tough time shifting blame for high energy prices onto Democratic policies that incentivize renewables.

Wind and solar energy, along with natural gas, consistently rank as some of the most popular forms of energy. That’s despite years of Trump attempting to portray wind and solar as harmful to the economy, wildlife, and public health.

Our polling has also found that voters already correctly identify wind and solar as the cheapest forms of energy and more affordable than other energy technologies.

And when we asked voters who or what they blame for higher electricity prices, wind and solar energy ranks dead last, with only 5% of voters selecting increased reliance on these technologies. Instead, voters most often blame utility companies for increasing profits and increased energy demand from new industries like AI.

High Energy Prices Open an Economic Populist Lane

In the press, on social media, and in town halls, Democrats need to drive home their plan to actually lower electric bills.

That means calling out the bad actors that are driving these rate hikes — including Trump and his war on clean energy; utility monopolies charging junk fees, ripping off ratepayers, and lobbying against clean energy; and Big Tech companies that are forcing the public to foot the bill as they build data centers that are straining the power grid.

Beyond just calling out bad actors, Democrats must offer an alternative vision for lowering costs. Renewables offer the cheapest and most reliable path to strengthen our grid and reduce household energy burdens. But, to make a cleaner, more resilient grid a reality, Democrats need to pair investments in renewables with smart policies targeted to keep utilities and fossil fuel companies from passing inflated costs on to ratepayers. That also means embracing a bold energy agenda that cracks down on price gouging, modernizes the grid and builds energy resilience, requires large-load consumers like data centers to foot their own bills, and supports publicly owned clean energy projects that yield direct benefits for communities.

Voters must see a clear choice: to elect a Democrat who will fight to cut their bills and keep their lights on, or to elect a Republican who will protect their corporate donors’ interests. If Democrats can show they are serious about tackling the electricity affordability crisis with clean, cheap power and credible protections for working families, they won’t just win on climate, but also on the cost of living.

Read the full Insights piece here.

• NEW from DFP fellow Betony Jones: “Tying Labor Standards to Clean Energy Incentives: How Biden’s Department of Energy Tackled Climate Industrial Policy,” by Betony Jones (Roosevelt Institute)

• “Minnesota tribal nations have legal sovereignty. They want energy sovereignty.” by Brian Martucci (Minnesota Reformer)

• “The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late,” by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton (Verso)

• “California’s Big Climate and Energy Package, Explained,” by Emily Pontecorvo (Heatmap)

• “All Guns and No Butter on a Burning Planet,” by Khem Rogaly and Patrick Bigger (Jacobin)

• “Coal Miners With Black Lung Say They Are ‘Cast Aside to Die’ Under Trump,” by Lisa Friedman (The New York Times)

• “How Trump gutted the team meant to build America’s energy future,” by Maria Gallucci (Canary Media)

Intensifying political chaos and insufficient planning to combat climate and economic crises pose existential challenges. In this newsletter, we offer a monthly snapshot of the widespread demand for climate action and pathways forward.

Subscribe now

Rising Electricity Prices Shouldn’t Mean Ripping Off Ratepayers

Across the country, rising electricity prices are making headlines, with prices predicted to rise an average of 13% — and as high as 26% in certain parts of the country — from 2022 to 2025. Driving these increases are expensive upgrades and repairs as our aging electric grid struggles against intensifying, climate change-driven extreme weather, an overreliance on natural gas exposing the grid to high price volatility, and rising demand for electricity, fueled by the AI and data center boom and the shift to electric transport and buildings.

And voters are feeling these price hikes: A new Data for Progress poll finds 62% of voters report paying more for their utility bills, including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. When asked who is most responsible for higher electricity utility bills, voters most often blame utility companies increasing their profits (38%).

New research from Climate and Community Institute and Public Grids shows that these voters aren’t wrong: The electricity affordability crisis is enabled by utilities’ ratemaking policies and practices, as well as private utilities’ interest in maximizing profits for shareholders, often at the expense of ratepayers. Expert analysis of how utility rates are set for working people shows that most efforts to reform the U.S. power grid within the past several decades have focused on privatizing ownership of energy infrastructure, leading to a byzantine and uncoordinated grid that has destabilized costs, made services less reliable, decreased energy conservation, slowed renewable energy development, and hastened upward wealth redistribution.

The report outlines six policy recommendations to protect people from rising costs, shutoffs, and utility price gouging:

1. Year-round protections from utility shutoffs and policies to close coverage gaps should be implemented to protect people with low incomes — especially the elderly, the disabled, and families with children, all of whom are at greater risk of illness or death during extreme temperatures.

2. Public utility commission staff and commissioners should be required to evaluate a baseline for all costs of needed grid investments with a 0% rate of return on equity premium, as if the investments were made under public ownership.

3. Public banks or other public finance authorities should be established and used to support termination of privately held franchise agreements and buy back the grid for public ownership and local control.

4. State and local public service commissioners should compel utilities to advance a just and equitable transition under existing utility regulation authorities.

5. Elected officials like governors and mayors should direct their utility regulators to review history of approved rates of return on electric grid investments and evaluate the total excess costs to their communities above the actual cost of capital secured by private utilities.

6. State consumer advocates and attorneys general should establish new practice areas that focus on least-cost grid planning to protect state economic interests and consumer rights, such as estimating public ownership of the entire energy system, including generation, transmission, and distribution system investment and operation costs.

Yet, voters are split on which party they trust more to handle rising electric bills: 39% say they trust the Democratic Party more to handle electric bills, while 38% say they trust the Republican Party more.

Clearly, voters are concerned about rising electric bills and want a party to protect them, but aren’t sure which party they can trust to take action. With prices only projected to keep rising, especially with the Trump administration’s recent attacks on clean energy and grid investments, we need to act fast to ensure reliable, affordable electricity for all.

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.

Subscribe now

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Data Drop on Data Centers

• Our new polling with WE ACT for Environmental Justice finds that most voters haven’t heard much about data centers, let alone the construction of data centers in their state. After reading a short description about data centers, a majority of voters (56%) say they support the construction of data centers in their state, though most of the support is concentrated among those who say they “somewhat support” (40%) their construction, signaling that a number of voters are still making up their minds about them. Given the many highly concerning reports about the environmental and social harms of new data center deployment, we next asked respondents whether they believe their state and local government should be doing more or less to reduce the environmental and human health impacts from the construction of data centers, or whether they are already doing enough. We find a plurality of respondents (48%) say their local elected officials should be doing more to prevent these harms, while 29% say they are already doing enough. Read the full brief here.

Americans Are Ready for Green Living

• The cost of living is rapidly outpacing stagnating wages, putting increasing pressure on millions of Americans who are struggling to afford goods ranging from groceries and utilities to cars and homes. Our new survey of Americans finds that housing insecurity is felt widely, with more than 3 in 5 adults (63%) reporting that they have experienced at least one indicator of housing precarity in the past year, and a quarter of adults reporting that they’ve experienced five or more of these indicators. These findings reflect the urgency of addressing the housing affordability crisis, and also suggest promising opportunities to respond. As we reported in our Popular Solutions newsletter with the Climate and Community Institute last month, there is robust and broad-based support for federal investment in affordable and sustainable housing development. Adults also widely support specific policy interventions that would promote energy efficiency for low- and moderate-income households (74%), low-interest government financing options for affordable housing developers (72%), and high standards of workplace safety and fair wages (77%) in the housing sector. Read the full brief on these findings here.

Voters Really, Really Want to Make Polluters Pay

• In a special edition of this newsletter earlier this month, we released a new poll with our friends at Fossil Free Media, finding that voters expect climate change to impact everyday costs for things like utilities and groceries. What’s more, we find that voters widely believe that extreme weather and climate change-related events have been on the rise in recent years. And voters are ready to hold oil and gas companies responsible for getting us in this mess in the first place: Roughly three-quarters of voters (74%) support requiring oil and gas companies to pay a share of climate-related costs, including 86% of Democrats, 74% of Independents, and 61% of Republicans. Full findings in our crossover newsletter here.

No, Really, There’s MASS(achusetts) Support for Making Polluters Pay

• We didn’t stop at polling voters nationally — later in the month, we released a new survey of Massachusetts voters, finding polluter accountability policies enjoy robust support statewide. Specifically, 73% of Massachusetts voters say they’d support a climate superfund bill, while 60% would be more likely to support a candidate who pursues polluter accountability. After voters read that climate change-related extreme weather events cost the U.S. economy a staggering $1 trillion last year, support for polluter accountability increases even more. Check out the survey results here, and follow Fossil Free Media on Substack here.

Team DFP @ NYCW

Data for Progress pounded the pavement in Manhattan and Brooklyn during New York City’s Climate Week. The week by the numbers? Double-digit $2.90 MTA charges, a shameful amount of $8 coffees, and daily step counts easily topping 10,000.

Our third annual Climate Week happy hour with Evergreen Collaborative, Climate Cabinet Education Fund, and the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators was a huge hit, and thanks to all our friends who came out to commit to climate progress in the states and at the local level no matter what. And a special shoutout to our speakers: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Jigar Shah, State Sen. Brian Kavanagh, Del. Lorig Charkoudian, Doreen Harris, and Assemb. Howard Watts.

State Policymakers Talk Renewable Energy Siting

The U.S. urgently needs to accelerate renewable deployment to address climate change, growing energy demand, and rising electricity costs. Yet, cuts in federal support, restrictive local siting ordinances, conflicts between state and local stakeholders, and local opposition are all increasing project costs and extending build times — delaying or canceling renewable build-out right as it is needed most. To understand how states are grappling with these challenges, Clean Tomorrow and Data for Progress collaborated on a new research report focused on the perspectives of state-level renewable siting policy stakeholders.

Renewable energy technologies are popular, inexpensive, and don’t produce greenhouse gases that pollute the environment and hurt our health. So, why aren’t we in the solar- and wind-powered economy of the future yet? The answer has a lot to do with something called the siting process: the pathway by which proposed infrastructure projects move from the permitting application stage to actually determining exactly where and how these projects will be built.

Across 30 survey responses and nine in-depth interviews with siting policy stakeholders from 17 states, stakeholders report facing significant obstacles in the siting process, particularly as a result of “indirect or social barriers,” like community opposition and misinformation, and “direct or institutional barriers,” such as restrictive local ordinances and difficulty securing transmission grid connections. Furthermore, challenges in the siting process are compounded by underfunded political advocacy for renewables, heterogeneity in siting policies across technologies and jurisdictions, and growing energy demands from data centers.

Siting stakeholders also perceive real opportunities to improve the renewable siting process and ensure policy solutions are durable and context-specific. Some of the policies that stakeholders identify as most helpful include mandating or incentivizing siting standards for local government adoption, prohibiting overly restrictive ordinances, and forging state-local government siting partnerships.

Beyond policy reforms, respondents also identify a number of tools and resources that could fill gaps in the siting landscape. State siting stakeholders are interested in best practices playbooks, case studies of successful siting policies, and messaging guidance focused on economic development and grid reliability. They also identify bottlenecks connected to but not directly involved in the siting process, like lack of transmission capacity, interconnection delays, and power purchase agreements (PPAs), as issues which still prevent many permitted projects from being built. Interviewees emphasize that improving these bottlenecks may be just as critical as reforming siting policy.

These systemic challenges risk deepening the gap between policy ambition and renewable energy deployment, especially as the federal government rolls back support for renewables. As the stakes for our grid become increasingly economic and environmental, the U.S. must strengthen partnerships between state and local governments, build consistent regulatory frameworks, and sustain investment in technical and political capacity to deploy renewable energy at the pace needed. Read the full report here.

• ORDER NOW: “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism,” by Thea Riofrancos (W.W. Norton)

• Issue 2 of The BREAK–DOWN: “Frontiers”

• “Blueprint for a Popular Climate Agenda,” by Ben Beachy (Democracy Journal)

• “‘Yes, and’ to Ben Beachy’s Blueprint for a Popular Climate Agenda,” by Betony Jones (Substack)

• “Don’t Let Trump Define What State Capitalism Can Be,” by Todd Tucker (The New Republic)

• “Insurance in the Polycrisis,” by Kate MacKenzie and Tim Sahay (Phenomenal World)

• “Critics say BlackRock’s Minnesota utility bid will increase rates – and clean energy goals will suffer,” by Dharna Noor (The Guardian)

• “Bidenomics wasn’t ambitious enough,” by Melanie Brusseler (Financial Times)

Welcome to this special crossover issue of Data for Climate Progress with our friends at Fossil Free Media!

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Voters Report Rising Climate Impacts and Strongly Support Making Polluters Pay

A new poll from Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media finds that more American voters are experiencing climate disasters firsthand and watching their costs rise — and they want to make polluters pay: A growing and overwhelming majority of Americans support requiring oil and gas companies to pay their share of climate damages.

This year brought record-breaking heat domes across the central and eastern U.S., catastrophic flash floods in Texas that swept away homes and devastated communities, and destructive wildfires in Southern California that leveled thousands of homes. These disasters are becoming more frequent and are driving up costs that average families are forced to bear.

As momentum for the Make Polluters Pay campaign grows, and states like New York and Vermont have passed "climate superfund" laws requiring polluting industries to pay for climate damages, the federal government is moving to strike down these measures and shield polluters from accountability. Yet our polling shows voters across party lines strongly support holding polluters responsible.

Key Findings

Nearly half of voters report they or someone they know has personally experienced extreme heat waves in the past five years. Most believe these events are becoming more frequent. Voters are especially concerned about rising insurance rates, with many expecting climate change to impact everyday costs like utilities and groceries.

Against this backdrop, over three-quarters of voters support requiring oil and gas companies to pay their share of climate damages through climate superfund legislation, and are more likely to support candidates who back these measures. This support has grown since earlier polling and crosses partisan lines, with majorities of Republicans backing polluter accountability.

Personal Experience with Extreme Weather

When voters were asked about extreme weather:

• 45% report experiencing extreme heat waves in the last five years;

• About 3 in 10 experienced flooding or flash flooding; and

• In oversampled states, impacts are especially clear: About half of North Carolina and Texas voters report flooding experience, while nearly 4 in 5 Floridians experienced hurricanes.

Rising Insurance Concerns

A strong majority (84%) of voters are concerned about rising home and property insurance rates in coming years — including 91% of Democrats, 85% of Independents, and 78% of Republicans. Concern is nearly universal in Florida at over 90%.

These findings mark an uptick from March 2025, when 78% of voters expressed concern about future insurance rate increases.

Expected Financial Impacts

A majority believe both climate change (56%) and fossil fuel pollution (52%) will directly affect household finances. Among those expecting impacts, large majorities point to:

• Higher utility bills (73%)

• Grocery bills (68%)

• Gas prices (65%)

• Health care, housing, and property maintenance costs

State results mirror partisan patterns, with voters in Illinois and Virginia more likely to expect financial impacts than those in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina.

Strong Support for Polluter Accountability

Roughly three-quarters (74%) of voters support requiring oil and gas companies to pay a share of climate-related costs, including:

• 86% of Democrats

• 74% of Independents

• 61% of Republicans

Support is broad across oversampled states, with more than two-thirds of voters in each state backing the requirement.

Voters Demand Climate Superfund Legislation

An overwhelming majority of voters want climate superfund laws that require oil and gas companies to pay their fair share of climate damages. Support is remarkably strong across both framings tested, including a cost-sharing framing (Split A) and a recovery fund framing (Split B):

• More than three-quarters of all voters support climate superfund legislation (Split A: 77%, Split B: 78%)

• Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats are on board (Split A: 89%, Split B: 89%)

• Around 4 in 5 Independents back these measures (Split A: 78%, Split B: 80%)

• Around two-thirds of Republicans support making polluters pay (Split A: 64%, Split B: 66%)

From Texas (73%) to Florida (80%), voters in every state we surveyed support their leaders passing these laws. This represents a surge in support from just last year, when 66% backed similar measures. The momentum is clear: Americans are ready for polluter accountability.

This is about fairness, accountability, and protecting communities from climate costs. Voters are showing they’re ready to elect leaders who will make polluters pay.

Opposition to Legal Immunity

While industry groups and some elected officials in the Trump administration are pushing for legislation that would grant oil and gas companies legal immunity from climate damage lawsuits, voters strongly oppose these efforts. Nearly two-thirds (65%) reject shielding fossil fuel companies from being sued for climate disasters — a position that cuts across party lines:

• 74% of Democrats oppose immunity

• 66% of Independents oppose immunity

• 55% of Republicans oppose immunity

This opposition has remained steady since March 2025, when we found identical levels of voter resistance to protecting polluters from accountability. The message is clear: Even as the federal government moves to shield oil companies from lawsuits, voters believe these corporations should remain liable for the climate damages they cause.

Conclusion

The findings demonstrate that voters are experiencing climate impacts firsthand and watching their costs rise. Furthermore, they strongly believe oil and gas companies should pay their fair share. From insurance rates to utility bills, Americans see what's coming and they want action.

Across parties and states, support for polluter accountability is broad and consistent – and it’s also growing stronger. As states pass climate superfund laws and the federal government tries to block them, voters have made their position clear. They want to Make Polluters Pay.

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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.

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Enhanced Oil Recovery Will Doom Our Chances at a Fossil-Free Future

• In the Carbon Herald, DFP’s Catherine Fraser sounds the alarm that the U.S. is hurtling toward the fossil fuel industry’s total capture of direct air capture (DAC) and carbon removal (CDR) as a whole. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Occidental Petroleum, enhanced oil recovery (EOR), and the fossil fuel wing of the CDR industry all got a huge boost. OBBBA incentivizes the use of direct air capture for EOR, meaning Occidental and other companies will now be able to earn more for each ton of carbon they capture for EOR. Given the dwindling public funding for CDR, Trump’s threats to kill the Biden-era DAC hubs, and the tremendous shortcomings of the voluntary carbon market, EOR may emerge as the only bankable means for DAC. This is a five-alarm fire. A climate-positive future for CDR is still possible, but we must remain skeptical about involving the very fossil fuel companies that got us into this mess in the first place. It’s ever-apparent that they will not get us out of this crisis. Read the full piece here.

A Majority of Voters Agree With the Endangerment Finding

• In July, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, announced that the Trump administration would revoke the endangerment finding — an agency rule that determined that a core list of six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.” Ya think?! New DFP polling finds that an overwhelming majority of voters believe the central thesis of the endangerment finding — that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health. And an overwhelming majority — 86% — of voters think that these emissions should be regulated. Full brief here.

Voters Support Geothermal and Nuclear Energy Development Over Fossil Fuels

• Despite the Trump administration’s full-fledged attack on clean energy, particularly wind and solar, geothermal and nuclear have emerged largely unscathed since Donald Trump’s first term. Our new polling finds that a majority of voters support expanding the development of both geothermal and nuclear energy, and want to prioritize developing clean energy (including renewable, geothermal, and nuclear) over fossil fuels. What’s more, voters think these two clean energy technologies have a more positive impact on the environment, compared with fossil fuels. As demand for electricity rises and the urgency to decarbonize our power system grows, nuclear and geothermal development presents a tremendous opportunity to deliver clean, reliable power to the grid — and voters support such development. Read the full report here, and check out coverage of the report in Latitude Media here.

Voters Want Their State Legislators to Do More on Climate

At the start of this month, DFP’s Grace Adcox attended the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators Forum in Boston, Massachusetts, connecting with legislators in states stretching from Maine to Hawaii to share recent public opinion and messaging data on climate. In her remarks, she emphasized public awareness of the relationship between climate change and financial impacts, and the opportunities that legislators have to step up on climate policy efforts as the federal government steps back. In particular, legislators can highlight their environmental policy efforts using effective messaging grounded by the kinds of cost-of-living and health issues that their constituents are grappling with, like their utility costs or costs related to recovering from extreme weather.

Given the wholly abysmal state of climate policy at the federal level, many are calling for states to step up and take action. New polling from DFP finds that voters support these calls for state action. Nearly 1 in 3 voters agree with a statement saying their state elected officials have made energy and environmental issues too low of a priority, including around 2 in 5 Democrats (41%) and Independents (37%). Voters also think that their state benefits from energy and environmental policies, with a majority of voters (60%) saying that their community benefits either somewhat (42%) or greatly (18%) from these policies. As we all weather the storm at the federal level, we have a tremendous opportunity at the state level to demonstrate that ambition trumps nihilism, that joy beats fear, and that climate policy can work for working people. Full brief here.

Voters Expect Local Renewable Energy Development Will Have a Positive Impact on Their Community

By Brynne Robbins

With growing local opposition to renewable energy projects across the country and Republican lawmakers dismantling incentives for clean energy development (despite often representing districts with some of the highest potential for clean energy generation), renewables are facing headwinds. But local and legislative opposition to renewables doesn’t necessarily align with public opinion. Voters — including Republicans — want clean energy, and they want it close to home. Indeed, our new polling data suggests that renewable energy opponents may be a vocal few.

Despite frequently taking the blame for the lack of progress on renewable energy projects, Not-in-My-Backyard attitudes, or NIMBYism, don't tell the whole story. Beyond NIMBYism, our data shows that voters’ attitudes toward renewable energy development aren’t just shaped by partisanship, either. With intensifying climate change and extreme weather and rising energy demand straining the grid and consumers’ wallets, the need to build renewable energy at pace and scale is increasingly important. However, renewable energy projects often face uncertain futures, and a better understanding of the impacts — both positive and negative — that voters expect renewables to have can help craft stronger arguments in favor of renewable energy buildout.

Voters on both sides of the aisle are hopeful about the impacts renewable energy could have on their community, anticipating comparable or improved quality of life (80%), home values (78%), and job opportunities (77%) if their community pursued a clean energy project. A majority of voters also think renewables are equally or more resilient and reliable than fossil fuels (52%); only 15% see fossil fuels as both more reliable and more resilient.

Science shows that new renewable energy projects are needed to combat the worst effects of climate change, and voters agree. Three in four likely voters (74%) believe that the U.S. needs to build new renewable energy projects to combat climate change, and over half think this should include some in their own community. Plus, nearly half of voters (44%) think it should be easier to approve renewable energy development in their community.

From more job opportunities to better quality of life to added resilience against increasingly extreme weather, voters expect investment in clean energy to pay off for their community. Despite the dark cloud that the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have hung over renewable development, voters are clearly optimistic about renewable energy development where they live.

Read the full brief here.

• “Beyond Bidenomics: On what is living and what is dead in economic policy,” by Alex Williams (Common Wealth)

• “Now We Decide the Future of U.S. Climate Policy,” by Advait Arun (Heatmap)

• “Who Should Pay for Carbon Removal in the UK?” (Carbon Balance Initiative)

• “Trump tariffs and green energy rollbacks push household electricity bills up 10%,” by Dharna Noor (The Guardian)

• “As Progressive Elected Officials, We Choose Both Economic Populism and Abundance,” by Burhan Azeem, Teresa Mosqueda, Zo Qadri, and Anna Brawley (The Nation)

• “Poll: Half of New Yorkers support building a new nuclear plant,” by Alexander C. Kaufman (Field Notes)

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Intensifying political chaos and insufficient planning to combat climate and economic crises pose existential challenges. In this newsletter, we offer a monthly snapshot of the widespread demand for climate action and pathways forward.

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Voters Are Ready to Transform Housing With Green Industrial Policy

The United States faces twin crises: a deepening housing shortage and an accelerating climate emergency. Millions of Americans struggle to make rent or buy a home, while seeing their utility prices and utility debt soar to historic highs, driven by rapidly growing energy demand, poorly insulated homes, and increasingly extreme weather. Yet housing remains largely absent from federal climate strategies, and climate remains an afterthought in many affordable housing debates. To address these crises, we must shift from piecemeal policy efforts to a coordinated, federally backed transformation of the housing sector.

And new polling from Data for Progress finds the public is ready for this shift. More than 3 in 5 U.S. adults (61%) support increased federal spending on affordable housing, a +33-point net margin of support. Voters increasingly recognize housing not just as a market commodity, but as an essential public good — one that the federal government has both a responsibility and a mandate to deliver.

Climate and Community Institute’s recent report, Transforming the Housing Sector with Green Industrial Policy, shows how we can entirely reshape the housing sector to deliver on demonstrated popular demand for affordable housing. To decarbonize, decommodify, and democratize the housing sector, we must double housing construction, rapidly expand the retrofitting of existing homes, and do so with union labor, clean energy, and domestically manufactured materials. With a nationally coordinated strategic approach, we can align the supply chain, workforce, and funding streams needed to effectively deliver affordable and sustainable housing at scale.

Housing and climate strategy go hand in hand. As CCI makes clear, investing in green social housing delivers cascading benefits beyond just greater housing affordability, including lower energy bills, reduced emissions, climate-resilient communities, and millions of good-paying jobs. Furthermore, adopting green housing industrial policy means we can lower the costs of green housing materials; build coalitions across government, industry, labor, and residents; and layer complementary policies to help those in greatest need reap the benefits of upgraded homes. In short, public support for housing is part and parcel of ensuring security, dignity, and stability in an increasingly volatile world.

The blueprint exists and voters are ready. What’s needed now is the political will to champion green, affordable housing as core infrastructure and as a central pillar of climate and economic justice.

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.

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Are You Our Next Polling Analyst?

• Polling Analyst: We’re hiring a polling analyst to help expand our mission to empower movements using data. As a polling analyst, you’ll spend your days writing survey questions, analyzing data, and crafting polling memos. You’ll work closely with our polling team to run tests and prepare data products for the progressive movement. Preference for folks with interest in climate, energy, and environmental issues. Apply here.

Voter Opinion Is Warm on Extreme Heat Protections

• While an early record-breaking heat dome was busy scorching the eastern United States, we ran a poll to gauge voter opinion on extreme heat protections for workers and tenants. An overwhelming majority of voters (87%) support a proposed OSHA rule to ensure worker safety during periods of extreme heat. The measure would require employers to provide accessible drinking water, shaded break areas, and more. Beyond protections for workers, a strong majority of voters (76%) also support requiring landlords to provide indoor cooling or air conditioning to tenants. As summers continue to get hotter and hotter, access to air conditioning and indoor cooling is truly a matter of life or death. On a warming planet, air conditioning has become a human right. Full brief here.

Three Community Workshops in Colorado Coal Communities

This month, DFP’s climate team quite literally drove the entire state of Colorado, hosting community workshops in Pueblo, Norwood (in Colorado’s West End), and Craig. We visited these three communities, deemed “Coal Transition Communities” by Colorado’s state government, as they contain coal plants or mines that have closed or will close by 2030, in line with the state’s climate goals.

During our workshops, we sought to understand how these coal communities are experiencing the transition away from coal mining and coal-fired power generation, as well as what they envision for their futures. We also assessed attitudes toward potential local investments in carbon dioxide removal technologies, specifically direct air capture, to understand if carbon dioxide removal could be an industry of interest in the transition from coal. We’ll have much more to say in a report coming out this fall – stay tuned!

Talking Environmental Justice at the EPC

Earlier this week, DFP’s Tenneth Fairclough II and Grace Adcox presented the findings of DFP and the Environmental Polling Consortium (EPC)’s third wave of the EPC’s climate community poll. This wave focused on environmental justice (EJ) attitudes and views of recent federal efforts to repeal or weaken environmental protections. We find that a majority of voters believe EJ policies that help the most impacted communities do more good than harm.

Learn more and get involved with the EPC’s climate community poll here.

Touching Grass: Voters Want to Elect Politicians Who Defend Public Lands

By Elias Kemp

Since taking office, Donald Trump has upped the ante on rescinding protections for public lands, including national parks and wilderness areas. He has cut the National Park Service’s budget, announced his intention to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, and entertained the idea of auctioning off 3.3 million acres of public land, but ultimately withdrew the plan after Democrats and Republicans alike expressed their vehement opposition to it.

Earlier this month, DFP conducted a poll to gauge voters’ opinions on the Trump administration’s management of public lands. The results are consistent with the backlash that the GOP received when it proposed auctioning off land: Voters across party lines think favorably of the U.S. Forest Service (74% favorability), the National Park Service (74% favorability), and the Bureau of Land Management (46% favorability, which is a plurality). They oppose selling off public lands to pay for legislation (72% opposition, including 68% of Republicans) and cutting the budgets of agencies that oversee public lands, like the National Park Service (73% opposition, including 59% of Republicans). Only 17% of voters say there’s too much public land in the U.S., and some of it needs to be used for other purposes.

As politicians of every denomination begin to think about the midterm elections in 2026, they should consider that voters want to see (and elect) officials who defend public lands. When asked how likely or unlikely they are to vote for a legislator who supports a variety of causes, voters say they would probably vote for a politician who supports conserving wilderness areas (71% likely) and creating new public lands (58% likely).

However, voters are unlikely to cast their ballot for a politician who supports opening public lands for logging (57% unlikely), opening public lands for mining (59% unlikely), cutting the National Park Service budget (66% unlikely), selling off public lands to fund tax cuts (64% unlikely), or decreasing funding to the U.S. Forest Service (66% unlikely).

While Trump takes aim at the country’s public lands — which are still popular, regardless of party affiliation — voters say they want to keep those lands protected. Voters also want to cast their ballots for politicians who share this priority, rather than those who follow in the Trump administration’s unpopular footsteps.

For more information, read the full brief here!

• “What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis,” by Malcolm Harris (Hachette Book Group)

• "Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them," by Porter Fox

• "Trump Is Trying to Steamroll the Tennessee Valley Authority," by Alexander Kaufman (The Atlantic)

• "Disaster at FEMA," by David Graham (The Atlantic)

• "The Biggest Myth About the YIMBY Movement," by Ron Davis (The Atlantic)

• "To Succeed in Washington, Clean Energy Has to Play Both Sides," by Vasishth Srivastava (Heatmap News)

• "AI Could Help Decarbonize the Grid. It’s Already Helping Find More Oil." by Kate Brigham (Heatmap News)

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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.

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Meet Elias!

Hi everyone! My name is Elias Kemp (he/him), and since early June, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work as a climate and energy program intern here at Data for Progress. I’m a rising junior at Colby College, in Maine, where I’m pursuing a major in philosophy and a minor in environmental studies. Whenever I’m not holed up in the library, I work as an editor for Colby’s student newspaper, explore off-campus with Run Club, and play the drums in two student bands.

At DFP, I draft surveys, write briefs, and conduct research alongside the other members of the climate team to forward progressive climate policy. I have spent most of my life in the Intermountain West, and I currently live in northern Colorado, so my areas of interest include the wilderness, water rights, and wildfire management, to name just a few. Later this summer, I’m excited to write and field my own survey on these subjects.

Looking to the future, I intend to pursue a career in environmental law. Both here at DFP and in my work after graduating from college, I aspire to advocate for the health of our planet and its many inhabitants, especially by creating and stewarding policies that guide our interactions with the climate and the natural world.

If you have any questions about my work, or if you’re wondering where to hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, feel free to send an email to elias@dataforprogress.org.

Meet Brynne!

Hello! I’m Brynne Robbins (she/her), and I’m so excited to be joining Data for Progress as a climate and energy program intern this summer. I’m headed into my final year at Colby College, where I’m double majoring in government and environmental policy, with a minor in music. I compete on the cross country and track teams, and I can often be found in the pottery studio, the arboretum, or playing traditional fiddle music.

Growing up in rural Maine, I’ve witnessed the impacts of climate change on the place I love, and it has been one of my biggest motivators to pursue a career in environmental law. My work in the environmental sphere so far has spanned monitoring for and removing invasive aquatic plants, conducting field research on common loons, contributing to marine policy research on campus as an undergraduate research assistant, and working on the advocacy team at the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

At Data for Progress, I work with the climate team to help to draft polls, conduct research, and write for the website and newsletter. I’m eager to learn more about policy development and the world of public opinion research. I’m also excited to undertake my own research project later this summer, which will explore the potential for clean energy development to increase community resilience to extreme weather events.

I’d love to hear from you, whether it’s about a polling question, running, or your favorite spots in Washington, D.C. You can reach me at brynne@dataforprogress.org!

Thom Tillis Must Have Seen This …

• In Heatmap News, we find that by a +13-point margin, North Carolina voters want the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to be kept in place, not repealed. This includes 71% of Democrats and 50% of Independents. Hours after announcing he’d forgo a reelection bid, Sen. Thom Tillis took to the Senate floor to bash his own party’s reconciliation bill. We think it was this poll — and definitely not the bill’s outrageous, industry-killing excise tax on solar and wind, or the more than 660,000 North Carolinians who’d lose Medicaid if it passes — that pushed him over the edge. Wow, it’s bleak out there. Drink some water, everyone.

Voters Want Government Loans for New Clean Tech

• The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) has been driving American energy innovation for two decades, by investing in new domestic energy and manufacturing projects like solar, nuclear power plants, and battery manufacturing. And voters see the vision: 61% of likely voters want government-funded loans for renewable energy development. Despite this, lawmakers are considering rescinding LPO funding for FY2026 due to DOE budget cuts — but they’re out of touch with voters. Fifty-eight percent of all likely voters want to keep this funding in place. Read the brief here.

EPA Mercury Regulations Are in Retrograde, and Voters Aren’t Thrilled

• Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released plans to roll back limits on how much mercury, carbon dioxide (CO2), and other pollutants power plants can emit. We asked voters what they thought, and nearly three-quarters (74%) are concerned about the EPA’s rollback — understandable, given how bad mercury is for your health. Sixty-nine percent of voters support keeping the current mercury limits, and 66% support current rules that limit CO2 emissions. Only about 1 in 5 voters think the mercury (19%) and CO2 (22%) regulations should be repealed. Read the brief here.

Voters Are Experiencing Climate-Related Wallet Woes

• Earlier this month, we ran a survey to figure out whether voters are worried about the financial impacts of climate change. With 62% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, it should surprise few of our readers that they are. A majority of voters already report that they’re paying more for groceries (77%) and electricity (60%) year over year. A majority of voters (58%) are most concerned about having to pay more for food as climate change worsens, and a similar percentage of voters think climate change will have a direct financial impact on them and their families. Read the brief here.

Data Is a Tool – Its Value Is in How We Use It

On June 26, Data for Progress’ Betony Jones and Catherine Fraser hosted a webinar, along with UC Berkeley’s Moneesha Kalamder and Rose Strauss, Rhodium Group’s Hannah Hess, and Atlas Public Policy’s Tom Taylor, to commemorate the launch of DFP’s new Data for Power resource guide and data repository.

In the waning days of the Biden administration, DFP embarked on a massive project to download resources and datasets that catalog the climate and energy investments made during that administration and as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS). This repository – intended to be used by organizers, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders – summarizes and makes available all the resources and datasets downloaded and archived by Data for Progress.

In the guide, we’ve also included tips for organizers and researchers on how the data can be used to drive community benefits.

Betony Jones sums up the values of these resources in a new Insights piece:

Going forward, we will continue to support state policymakers, researchers, advocates, and organizers in navigating these resources to support the critical work on the ground. These maps and data are tools not to commemorate a once-in-a-lifetime influx of investment, but to ensure that BIL and IRA are the catalysts of a durable clean energy transition, transformative industrial strategy, and a new American economy.

You can find a recording of the webinar here and our slide deck here.

Voters Are Hot and Bothered About Cuts at NOAA and FEMA

By Elias Kemp and Brynne Robbins

Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, and while there has only been one named storm so far, experts predict there are anywhere between 12 and 18 more on the way. The South is still grappling with the fallout of last year’s Hurricane Helene, the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina. Meanwhile, wildfire season is fast approaching, and a record-setting heat wave blanketed the country east of the Rockies in late June.

While most people across the U.S. are bracing for the 2025 disaster season, the White House is doing the opposite. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose work is critical for extreme weather forecasting, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which provides aid in the aftermath of disasters, have both been targeted by budget and staffing cuts. NOAA may see 40% of its budget slashed, and the Trump administration plans to phase out FEMA entirely at the end of hurricane season.

To gauge national opinion on the cuts at NOAA and FEMA, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,166 likely voters. Regardless of party affiliation, voters are strongly opposed to Trump’s recent cost-cutting decisions.

When provided with one-sentence descriptions of both federal agencies, voters strongly support maintaining or increasing the funding allocated to NOAA and FEMA. Around 4 in 5 voters (79%) say funding for NOAA should stay the same or increase, including 85% of Democrats, 77% of Independents, and 75% of Republicans. Almost the same number of voters (80%) believe FEMA funding should stay the same or increase, including 88% of Democrats, 76% of Independents, and 75% of Republicans. Less than a tenth of voters want to see NOAA (6%) or FEMA (9%) funding reduced.

When asked to indicate their top two concerns about the impacts of staffing and budget cuts at NOAA and FEMA, voters say they are worried about there being insufficient resources for state emergency management planning (27%), slower emergency response times (25%), and an inability for their communities to recover financially from extreme weather events (25%).

The data indicates that voters oppose Trump’s recent and ongoing cuts at NOAA and FEMA. It remains to be seen what the effects of those cuts will be during the 2025 disaster season, which promises to be bad enough even if these two federal agencies were operating at pre-Trump capacity. Check out the full brief here.

• “Zohran Mamdani Is Proposing Green Abundance for the Many,” by Batul Hassan (Jacobin)

• “Last Call at the Disaster Department,” by Zoë Schlanger (The Atlantic)

• “The Long, Slow Death of ‘Development,’” by Holly Jean Buck (Compact)

• “Could this city be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change?” by Julia Simon and Ryan Kellman (NPR)

• “To Get Abundance, We Need to Discipline Capital,” by Brian Callaci (Jacobin)

• “‘How come I can’t breathe?’: Musk’s data company draws a backlash in Memphis,” by Ariel Wittenberg (Politico)

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