Let’s say you were given the opportunity to name the greatest effort to combat climate change in American history. What would you call it?
Democrats got that rare opportunity two years ago this week, when they passed a bill that would invest about $369 billion in renewable energy, electric vehicles, energy-efficiency upgrades for homes and other green technologies by August 2022. It came out of negotiations with then-Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. In West Virginia, the main opposition force against this bill has a surprising name: the Inflation Reduction Act.
Although the law was unlikely to do much to offset rising prices in the short term, even as inflation soared, it did include provisions allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices and ensure that Americans could afford health insurance. mostly The assumed goal was to combat climate change: by one estimate, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
Since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, it has had real results: Last year, about 3.4 million households took advantage of tax credits for clean energy and energy efficiency upgrades. Recent data from the Treasury. This means that 750,000 homes will have new rooftop solar panels and nearly 270,000 homes will have energy-efficient heat pumps. The incentives in this bill will allow businesses to 360 billion dollars A company that makes batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other technologies.
But ask the average American what he or she thinks of this country’s groundbreaking efforts to combat climate change and you might get a blank stare. About 4 in 10 registered voters say they haven’t heard “at all” about it. A poll conducted this spring by Yale University and George Mason University.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Democrats are getting a lot of credit for climate action from voters who care about it. Just over half of liberal Democrats say they haven’t heard much about the IRA. “That’s a real red flag to me, because again, this is your party’s base,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “These are the people who are most politically aware and follow political news. And they don’t know about it.”
Congress once gave bills more intuitive names—think the Clean Air Act of 1970—but the IRA follows a more recent tradition. Carefully branded environmental legislationDemocrats emphasize positive traits that they hope will resonate across the political spectrum. Rarely do those positive traits include the word “climate.” For example, the effort in Congress in 2009 to adopt a national cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions was called the “American Clean Energy and Security Act.”
This reluctance to talk directly about climate change may stem from a fundamental bias in American politics, Leiserowitz said. Most people Including politiciansI believe climate change action is much less popular than it actually is. In fact, most Americans already be surprised or worried I care about climate change and want to do something to improve it.
Leiserowitz went so far as to call the inflation reduction bill a “failure of communication,” which could have implications for the presidential election this November. Climate change is not generally a top concern for voters, but A poll last year found that For younger voters, it ranked as the third priority, along with preventing gun violence, and second only to economic issues like inflation and jobs that pay a living wage.
Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The good news for Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris (now the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out of the race in July) is that people tend to like hearing about the IRA. Among those who say climate change is one of their top voting issues: 97% supported the bill After reading the short description.
With just three months until the election, it’s clear that the climate message will be even harder to get through the news cycle. “If we wanted to get the benefit of passing this truly world-changing legislation, we frankly should have been getting it out there for the last two years,” Leiserowitz said. In addition to the lack of political attention and media coverage, there’s another challenge to communicating the benefits of IRAs: People rarely get to see them in person. John Marshall, CEO of Potential Energy, a nonprofit climate marketing company, said the tax incentives are used for things that people don’t buy often, like electric cars and heat pumps.
But the messaging problems with the Inflation Reduction Act start with its title. “Most people will never learn more than the name itself,” Leiserowitz said. “They missed their first and biggest opportunity to communicate if the goal was to highlight climate issues.” People don’t connect the dots. The April survey didn’t provide much context for the law, 16% of Americans The IRA said it believed the organization could help address climate change.
Angela Bradberry, a communications professor at the University of Florida, said many journalists initially resisted the name, using it sparingly in their stories, often only to fact-check whether the bill would actually reduce inflation. She noted: 2022 AP Article In Bradbury’s opinion, it would be more accurate to call the bill “Democrats’ flagship climate and health care bill.” Biden acknowledged that the IRA name was a missed opportunity. “I wish we hadn’t put that name on it,” he said. During a speech last August.
I put a lot of effort into coming up with the magic words. “Reconstructing” climate change To further bolster public support for political action, they point to side benefits, such as helping the economy or public health (or inflation). As Biden has often said, “When you think about climate change, you think about jobs.” But that impulse may be misguided. “That’s not why people think they should take action on climate change,” says Leisrowitz. “It’s about protecting the people, places, and things we love. … This could destabilize civilization, and we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs that it would create.”
Marshall’s marketing research shows that when it comes to the inflation-control bill, a simple message resonates with people: that the bill is a breakthrough in tackling climate change.
Marshall suspects the impulse to overthink communications stems from the fact that climate change will take decades to solve. “Humans naturally become impatient and say, ‘Oh, that message didn’t work. We’ve still got climate change. Let’s try something else,’” he said. “And the most important thing in marketing and messaging is to pick something and stick with it and be confident about it.”
