As the Election Draws Near, Democrats Face a Climate Messaging Conundrum

In 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the single biggest investment in climate action in United States history. The landmark bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), will provide nearly $370 billion in climate and energy investments, some of which has already funded a variety of projects across the country. 

The problem? Many voters have never heard of it, according to a June survey by Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.  

The survey is the latest in a series of polls and analyses showing people’s lack of knowledge about the IRA since it passed two years ago, despite its widespread impact in states across the political spectrum. It also points to a weak spot in the Democratic party, which analysts say has long struggled to communicate successes around climate policies like the IRA to potential voters. 

A recent memo obtained by E&E News shows that Democrats are working to fix this by ramping up their climate messaging, particularly as Vice President Kamala Harris makes her run for president. Still in the early days of her campaign, Harris has gained some traction in the climate voter space. But with only 95 days until the election, some experts wonder if this revamped climate messaging push is starting too late. 

So What Is the IRA? No matter how politically literate you are, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t know about every facet of the Inflation Reduction Act—it’s a behemoth of a bill that touches on healthcare, complex tax policies and (unsurprisingly) inflation. 

At its core, though, the IRA “is fundamentally a climate bill” with massive investments going toward the clean energy transition, Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told me. “It’s almost all carrot and no stick.”

Many states have already started munching on these carrots. For example, the Biden administration recently distributed $7 billion in IRA grants to expand access to rooftop solar, particularly for low-income homes, which my colleague Dan Gearino wrote about in April. The law also allocates funding for projects related to climate adaptation, including voluntary relocation programs and coastline restoration. Even animals are benefiting from IRA investments, with millions dedicated to recovering endangered species such as the North Atlantic right whale. 

However, the recent Yale survey shows that messaging around the IRA still isn’t resonating with many voters. While the majority of registered voters from each party have heard “a little” about the bill, the survey found that about four in 10 have heard “nothing at all” about it. They conducted the survey during the fall and spring of 2023, too, and found a similar lack of awareness about the IRA. 

In a separate analysis published in June, the researchers surveyed only “pro-climate voters”—those who say that climate change is one of their top issues—and still found that only about half of them are familiar with the IRA. 

“Houston, we got a communication problem,” said Leiserowitz, who led the surveys. He added that this is part of a “perennial Democratic disease of being unable and unwilling to take credit for their win.” 

The Climate Messaging Push: Dems have tried to boost awareness around the IRA for years with little success, Axios reports. But a memo from the House of Representatives Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, shared with and reported by E&E News, reveals a new strategy to publicize IRA accomplishments to the voters. The main recommendation: “Don’t say IRA.” 

Instead, lawmakers are being urged to use terms like “climate plan,” or demonstrate concrete examples of how IRA funding improves lives, E&E reports. That could include hosting a ribbon cutting with a homeowner who tapped into IRA funding to go all-electric or touring a water supply project. 

Leiserowitz agreed that these types of approaches could engage more climate voters, and the recent Yale survey shows that more information is a good thing: After reading a brief description of the IRA, nearly three-quarters of registered voters said they support it, including 30 percent of conservative Republicans. 

As Democrats work to better tout their climate successes, Republicans are “taking advantage of the fact that this climate change is still a pretty nebulous concept for many, many Americans,” Leiserowitz said. 

As a result, climate communications can sometimes be to the detriment of a candidate. Before running for president this year, Harris was active in the climate policy space as attorney general and then senator of California. In 2019, she was one of the original co-sponsors of the Green New Deal, a progressive—but eventually failed—resolution aimed to help the country rapidly decarbonize and transition to clean energy. 

Initially, the deal had bipartisan support in the Senate. Then, the plan became embroiled in controversy when Fox News commentators falsely broadcasted that it aimed to take away the nation’s cheeseburgers, among other radical carbon policies that were not actually included in the plan. Roughly four months after the Green New Deal started gaining traction, support plummeted—something Leiserowitz calls the “Fox News Effect.”  

In some spaces, Harris’ past support of that resolution could be a boon, as evidenced by her recent endorsement by the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of about 20 climate groups. But as my colleagues Marianne Lavelle and Keerti Gopal write in their piece about the endorsement, it could also hurt Harris by giving “fodder for former President Donald Trump’s campaign as it coalesces around a strategy of painting Harris as a radical leftist who will block U.S. oil and gas development.” 

In any case, time is not on Harris’ side to push climate messaging in her favor around the IRA and her past record.

Harris “still needs to introduce herself to the American public, let alone make the case on specific issues like climate change,” Leiserowitz said. “It is still going to be absolutely vital to get those Americans who already care about this issue—climate change—to understand that there’s a stark difference between these two candidates, and your vote could make the difference, not just of this election, but of the future trajectory of the planet.”