Biden Needs to Break Through on Climate Messaging. Start Here.

🚨NEW poll shows the challenge we face communicating about Biden's clean energy plan:

❌Most Americans don't know about it
✅Most Americans SUPPORT its benefits once they learn about them

We need to talk to people where they are—consistently & authentically—across all platforms pic.twitter.com/xGMEgT2tJW

— Alex Wall (@AlexBWall) August 7, 2023

Reminds me of that moment in the Obama administration when many Americans would tell pollsters they were “against” the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but expressed overwhelming approval for the various provisions of that act when asked about them individually.
We’ve learned that media just does a shit job of informing people, so the rest of us just have to step up.
Start here.

Washington Post:

Nearly one year after President Biden enacted a sprawling package to combat harmful emissions and boost clean energy, his administration is struggling to demonstrate the law’s value to weary voters — and stave off a widening array of new political threats.

Most Americans — 57 percent — disapprove of Biden’s handling of climate change, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, which also finds that few adults say they know a good amount or great deal about the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that includes massive new investments in response to global warming.

The low approval and lack of public awareness underscore Biden’s top challenge entering the 2024 presidential race, as he tries to sell an unknowing electorate on an agenda that — in the eyes of the White House — has created jobs, boosted manufacturing and lowered costs for families.

The Inflation Reduction Act couples the largest-ever tranche of climate funding with new government programs that aim to lower prescription drug costs for seniors and pursue unpaid federal taxes. Democrats adopted the spending package last August, overcoming more than a year of fierce bickering inside their own ranks — and the staunch, unanimous objections of their Republicans foes.

With the work to implement the sprawling law now underway, the White House has sought to emphasize its early economic returns. That includes more than $110 billion in new investments to expand clean energy technology and manufacturing, according to data released separately by the administration on Monday, which tallied private-sector commitments announced in the 11 months since Biden signed the measure.

But the president’s pitch to sell these and other achievements to the public often has not resonated.

Generally, voters today appear to have little confidence in either party to respond to global warming, according to the Post-UMD poll. Asked how much they trust Republicans to address climate change, 74 percent say either “not much” or “not at all,” compared with 59 percent who say the same of Democrats.

While Democrats did secure historic new climate funding as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the poll finds 71 percent of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the package one year later. About 4 in 10 Americans say they support the law, 2 in 10 oppose it and roughly 4 in 10 are not sure. Support rises for some of the individual tax credits — for electric vehicles and solar panels, for example — that the law authorized.

“It’s not breaking through,” said Michael Hanmer, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, which co-sponsored the poll. He added that the survey demonstrates Biden’s lack of a simple, straightforward message about the benefits of the law for voters and its ability to help address climate change.

Below, more polling from Pew Research:

Meanwhile, those folks that would rather die than get vaccinated are still hostile to the science of Climate change, even as they choke on the air and watch their communities burn, flood, or dry up.