Politics & Global Warming, September 2021
3.1. About half of registered voters think policies that promote clean energy will improve economic growth and create jobs.
About half of registered voters (52%) think policies that promote clean energy will improve economic growth and create jobs, while about three in ten (31%) think it will have the opposite effect, reducing growth and costing jobs, and 16% think it will have no impact either way.1
Opinion is sharply divided along political lines – large majorities of liberal Democrats (85%) and moderate/conservative Democrats (69%) think clean energy policies will have a positive impact on the economy and jobs, while 39% of liberal/moderate Republicans and 71% of conservative Republicans think they will have a negative impact.
3.2. Most registered voters think the clean energy industry will create more good jobs than the fossil fuel industry.
More than six in ten registered voters (64%) think increasing production of clean energy in the U.S. will produce more new jobs than will increasing fossil fuel production, while about one in three (35%) think the opposite (that increasing fossil fuel production will create more jobs than will increasing clean energy production).2
Large majorities of liberal Democrats (94%) and moderate/conservative Democrats (83%), and about half of liberal/moderate Republicans (52%) think clean energy production will produce more good jobs. In contrast, about three in four conservative Republicans (77%) think increasing fossil fuel production will create more good U.S. jobs.
Table of Contents
1. Global Warming and Clean Energy as Government Priorities
2. Support for Policies to Reduce the Pollution that Causes Global Warming
3. Energy Production as an Economic Issue
4. Who is Responsible for Action on Global Warming?
5. State and Local Government Action on Global Warming
6. Political Actions to Limit Global Warming
Citation
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Carman, J., Neyens, L., Goldberg, M., Lacroix, K., & Marlon, J. (2021). Politics & Global Warming, September 2021. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Funding Sources
The research was funded by the 11th Hour Project, the Energy Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Grantham Foundation.