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February 25, 2025
Welcome to Season 9 of The Climate Conversation podcast! How many issues can you think of that 94% of U.S. voters agree on? Probably not very many. But a poll commissioned by U.S. Nature4Climate in 2024 revealed that 94% of voters across the United States support the expansion of natural climate solutions—actions that reduce emissions and increase carbon storage in forests, farms, grasslands, and wetlands—in public policy. To kick off the new season of EESI’s podcast, co-hosts Daniel Bresette and Alison Davis sit down with the bipartisan pollsters who led the survey, Lori Weigel of New Bridge Strategy and Dave Metz of FM3 Research.
Show notes:
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With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.
Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Daniel Bresette: Hello and welcome to the first episode of season nine of The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
Alison Davis: And I'm his co-host, Alison Davis. This is our first episode since the start of the new Congress and the presidential administration. Looking ahead, the podcast and all of EESI’s resources will continue to be a place you can go for policy relevant, science-based information on climate, energy and environmental issues.
Dan: Well, Alison, I think we're both technically co-hosts. I wouldn't say that I'm the host and you're the co-host. I don't think this is like in an airliner where there's a pilot and a co-pilot, but anyway, we'll figure that out later. More importantly than our podcast designations, it's a very busy time at EESI. I've spent a lot of time in the last couple weeks. Me and the policy team have been on Capitol Hill a lot, meeting with dozens and dozens of congressional staff from Democratic and Republican offices to hear about issues most important to their bosses, congressional staff remain extremely interested in finding opportunities for bipartisan compromise, and they're very eager to learn about climate solutions and all the multiple benefits that climate solutions deliver to communities and their constituents who live in those communities. And today, we're excited to bring you a great conversation about one of those issue areas, one that we cover a lot at EESI, and that is natural climate solutions.
Alison: In June of last year, U.S. Nature4Climate commissioned a bipartisan team of pollsters composed of New Bridge Strategy on the Republican side and FM3 Research on the Democratic side to conduct a survey on public support for natural climate solutions across the political spectrum with an emphasis on rural communities. The poll results showed an astounding 94% of voters support the expansion of natural climate solutions in public policy.
Dan: Respondents were provided with a definition of natural climate solutions as actions that reduce emissions and increase carbon storage in forests, farms, grasslands and wetlands, as well as examples like planting cover crops on farms, conserving forests and wetlands and ensuring communities have access to parks. This basic understanding was all it took to inspire overwhelming support from the group of 1000 people who participated in the survey, and today we're joined by the pollsters who led that survey, Laurie Weigel and Dave Metz.
Alison: Lori Weigel is the principal of New Bridge Strategy. She has directed research efforts for hundreds of political and public affairs campaigns throughout the country, including several efforts at the presidential level. Her roots in Republican politics guide her work bridging partisan divides and creating winning majorities. Lori previously served as the political pollster for Denver's News 4 and the Rocky Mountain News. She was a partner for over 20 years with Public Opinion Strategies, the largest Republican polling firm in the country, and was also Vice President for another GOP firm, The Tarrance Group. Lori has a Bachelor of Science and International Politics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
Dan: Also here with us, FM3 Research Partner and President Dave Metz. Dave provided opinion research and strategic guidance to hundreds of nonprofits, government agencies, businesses and political campaigns in all 50 states in the 2022 election cycle, Dave's research helped elect four Democratic members of Congress, a dozen state legislators and the mayor of San Jose, California, in addition to the passage of several statewide ballot measures. With a focus on conservation, clean energy and climate change, Dave's research has uplifted numerous environmental organizations and supported some of the largest conservation measures In natural history. Dave has a bachelor's degree in government from Harvard University and a master's in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. Laurie and Dave, welcome to the podcast.
Dave Metz: Glad to be here.
Lori Weigel: Thanks for having us.
Dan: Laurie and Dave, this is the third version of this survey in a three year period of time. That's a lot of polling in not a whole lot of years, how have you seen knowledge of and support for natural climate solutions evolve across those surveys?
Lori: First of all, we've seen overwhelming support for natural climate solutions, and while it's inched upward, it started really strong. So it's hard to even move the needle that much further. It's gone from 86% support in 2022 to 94% last year. That's about as high as it can possibly get. I think what's notable is that inching upward mostly came from Republicans, so they were up 17 points in our most recent survey compared to a few years ago. So really bipartisan support on this issue, widely held in every region of the country, every type of community, like every demographic subgroup that we could possibly look at, indicates support for natural climate solutions.
Dave: It's also worth noting that, you know, while there have been some some changes within the numbers, as Lori had said, despite the fact that the last five years over which we've conducted the survey have been an incredibly turbulent time when you think about our politics, our economy, global public health, the consistency of support across time, the fact that we do have these overwhelming and bipartisan majorities saying that this is the right way to tackle the climate crisis is striking. So much has changed, but this is something that has really been enduring and stayed the same in terms of public attitudes.
Dan: I mean, you can probably count on one hand the number of things that 94% of US voters can agree on. I doubt 94% of people would even agree that cheese belongs on a pizza. Why do you think natural climate solutions have such widespread appeal? What is it about them that appeals to so many different types of people?
Lori: Yeah, so I think one thing that we know is that if we just go grab someone off the street and start talking about natural climate solutions, it's not going to be the most familiar topic. So we do have to give some examples to people, but those examples are things that people care about. They want to conserve and replant forests. They want to take care of coastal wetlands, in large part because they see a benefit to them in their communities. So those co benefits of improving water quality or conserving wildlife habitat or ensuring that communities, you know where we're reducing the risk of flooding, in those communities, things like that touch people's lives and they feel are overwhelmingly important. So honestly, in the data, we see that you don't even need to believe in climate change to support these. We've got 76% support among granted, it's a minority of voters, but that small minority of voters who just simply say, “I don't believe climate change is even happening”, and they're still supportive of taking these steps because of these co benefits, yeah.
Dave: And I think it's also the case that for some voters, in their minds, they're comparing these strategies to other ones that they have heard a lot about for addressing climate change. Obviously, climate change is a big problem. We're going to need a multi pronged set of policy tools to take it on. But while they've heard a lot of political debate around things like electronic vehicle mandates or shifting away from natural gas infrastructure, there's no controversy around planting trees. There's no controversy around protecting forests. It seems very reasonable to them to help farmers agriculture in ways that are going to trap carbon in the soil. And so, you know, at a time when the issue of climate change can be polarizing and can divide people, the co-benefits that Laurie described really become a uniter and make this solution stand out to them as being distinct and different from a lot of the ones that they hear a lot about as part of our political debates.
Alison: Thinking about Congress, members of the 119th Congress have already sorted out their priorities from their campaigns with the voters in their districts, but they're still sort of getting together and finding their bearings as a group. Are there any particular findings from the survey that you would like to emphasize for the members of the new Congress?
Lori: Well, I think we were a little prescient in terms of pushing back on natural climate solutions. Obviously, we've seen over time just how strongly supported it is. But in last year's survey, we simulated some of those pros and cons, essentially pushed back hard on investing money in the same calling it, saying that some people oppose these investments, say like, we've got big budget deficits and inflation, and the last thing we need is to waste money on these quote unquote costly programs that aren't addressing a lot of impacts on Americans today. And even when we said all of that, sort of going with a I don't know, DOGE rationale, it was only 17 to 18% who sided with opponents. So the vast majority of American voters are still saying, “No, we think these are worthwhile investments.” We're not willing to go down that path of saying, this is a waste of American taxpayers money. So I think I just want them to know and have that perspective, that voters are rejecting those types of arguments,
Dave: I'd add. I mean, this is, as you noted, we're coming out of a political season where we saw some pretty big changes in American politics in terms of where different segments of the electorate are placing their support. And some of the most striking things were shifts among younger voters and voters of color to offer more support for Donald Trump and for Republicans than had typically been the case in recent election cycles. Those subgroups really were key to whatever degree we've seen some kind of political realignment in this election. Those same subgroups in this year's survey were the ones who also shifted the most dramatic, along with Republicans, to support natural climate solutions. We had a double digit increase in support among voters under 45: a double digit increase in support for natural climate solutions among voters of color: a 15 point increase in Latino voters specifically. So some of these demographic groups that are at the root of big changes in our national politics are also ones that are becoming even more broadly and intensely supportive of natural climate solutions, and I think in this political moment, that's something that's worth taking note of.
Alison: So Lori, I'd like to follow up with you about the areas within natural climate solutions or the types of messages that resonate most with Republican audiences, and also you sort of mentioned among those small percentage of people who do oppose investing public funds and natural climate solutions, some of the reasoning is concerns about the budget deficit. Does this survey begin to identify approaches to address their concerns?
Lori: Absolutely, I think that what we see are some of which we've already mentioned, are things like forests and investing in forests. People are increasingly concerned, not just in the West, but throughout the country, about reducing the risk of wildfire. This survey was conducted prior to the terrible Los Angeles fires. But even then, we've seen sort of this big increase in focus and concern about wildfire. And the idea of, you know, protecting the trees we already have, managing our forest to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, is something that voters and every type of community and voters across the partisan spectrum, particularly Republicans, are very supportive of the other type of investments that really connect with more conservative voters are those that focus on farms and helping farmers and ranchers. Acknowledging that, “Hey, these are the people that feed America and contribute to our economies.” They employ nearly one in 10 American workers, and these farms and ranches can be part of the solution to climate change. And talking about some of those examples really resonates with our conservative voters. So I think that's a couple of examples, of course, future generations, or some messaging that we know just connects across party lines, and that is for more than 20 years of doing polling on conservation work has always been a uniter. But again, I'd say some of the things, especially related to agriculture, really stand out among Republican voters.
Alison: And Dave, I'd love to hear your perspective about messengers. So not just the message itself, but selecting a credible and respected messenger is crucial for effective communication, especially with a topic like climate change, where it can be a little bit easier to speak with Democratic audiences. Does the survey suggest the types of people, institutions or organizations that might be compelling messengers on natural climate solutions and other climate topics, if you want to go beyond the friendlier to climate policy democratic audiences?
Dave: So I think you put your finger right on it. It is not hard to find messengers who are credible. For Democrats on this issue, Democrats feel that climate change is a crisis. They're strongly supportive of taking action to address it. Any number of scientific organizations and advocates for change have a lot of credibility with Democratic audiences, but for Republicans, where there is more skepticism, finding messengers who are credible, who can describe the realities that we're facing in ways that will have weight with more conservative audiences is important. I think the thing that the most credible messengers really share is they are people with on the ground, lived and career experience, working on the land and understanding the ways that a changing climate is affecting us. In our research on this topic, pretty much the most credible messengers are firefighters, you know, as we have seen as as already described, the, you know, increasing impacts that fire is having in the West, the people who are putting their lives on the line to protect lives and protect property when they say something's happening, and here's a good strategy to address it, that carries a lot of weight. People who work in industries where they need to change their practices in order to implement natural climate solutions are also credible messengers. So farmers and ranchers and foresters themselves, if you have messengers who can say, “Hey, we can undertake these practices, it's not hard to do. It's consistent with having a thriving and productive farm or forest or ranch, and we're doing something that's going to be good for the long term health of not just our property and our industry, but for the planet.” That carries a lot of weight as well. And obviously we're in a somewhat tumultuous time in this regard. But we have also seen that people who work within federal agencies that are tasked with the responsibility of managing public lands, whether it's park rangers or people who work for the Forest Service, also tend to be credible messengers. They are generally not seen as being part of the political process or people who are in government because of a political leaning, there are people who are there because they're trying to protect resources. They understand those resources, and therefore they have some credibility. Obviously, we're in a very chaotic time in terms of how the federal workforce is viewed, but nonetheless, we do have an abundant set of messengers that I think do have that kind of bipartisan credibility that you noted is important.
Dan: Lori and Dave, you spent your careers working on different sides of the aisle. You have different political leanings, but at the end of the day, you're both experts and professional surveyors of public opinion, the art and the science of how that works and what things mean, and all of that. And you've come together to apply that expertise to this topic, which is very, very cool. From your perspectives, what is the advantage, or are there any advantages of having pollsters come to a topic like this with different political leanings? What extra credibility does that give your findings? Does that create any challenges? Is it a situation where you know what kind of validation kind of comes along with having people who you know might come at the issue from different places, but ultimately, see, you know, the same message in the tea leaves.
Lori: It's not as if we look at the data and we don't think 82% means 82% so that's not sort of the point. I'll definitely say I've even had people misunderstand that. They think I only talk to the Republicans and interview them, and Davis only talks to the Democrats. No, we're looking at the overall electorate, but the conversations on either side of the aisle those different perspectives when, like I talked about, when we simulate pros and cons of in terms of messaging and push back on an issue and really sort of stress test it for our clients, you know that conversation is where I think it's helpful to have those different partisan perspectives and really help to inform, not the survey results necessarily, but how we frame the questions and the issues within the survey.
Dave: The example we always like to give is a number of years ago, Lori and I were working together to try to pass a constitutional amendment in Minnesota to fund conservation, and at the time, this required bipartisan support from across the Minnesota State Legislature, and we did a survey, it showed that the public was for this for a variety of different reasons, and we were tasked with going and talking to state legislators to explain the data. Well, Lori and I were looking at the exact same numbers. We both agreed that they were accurate, and this was a good representation of where Minnesotans were, but I sat down in an office with a legislator from Saint Paul who was really concerned about making sure there was Funding for Minnesota Public Radio that was in the bill, you know, some funding to protect arts and culture. And I walked them through the numbers and showed that voters were okay with that, but they really were enthusiastic about protecting wildlife and water. Lori, on the other side of the building, was sitting down with a state senator who's a big hunter, and then Lori was explaining that that was something that Minnesotans prioritized as well, and so from their different partisan perspectives, I think both of them ultimately ended up voting for the legislation, and it was the same body of data that we were using to make the case that the public supported it, and indeed they did. Ultimately, you know, voters of Minnesota passed it by an overwhelming margin. But you know, having someone who talks to Democrats understands their interests, and having someone who talks to Republicans and understands their interests and can sort of translate the data in ways that are relevant to those different audiences can help ensure that it gets broad acceptance at a time when our parties are so divided. You know, I think there's sometimes a presumption that a democratic pollster is doing polls to try to show that Democrats are winning and a Republican pollster is doing the opposite. That's not the case. Lori and I are using the exact same tools, and we have one overriding imperative, which is to get it right, because nobody wants to hire a pollster who's going to tell them news that makes them happy if it's not an accurate representation of where the public is. So really, even with our different partisan perspectives, we're using the same tools and driven by the same goal, which is to have an accurate understanding of where the public is.
Dan: I have a quick follow up on that. So you're working together now. You worked together then. That's awesome. How common is it for clients to kind of pull together pollsters from different political perspectives. Is that something that is in your experience, something that's a little bit unique to conservation and natural climate solutions, or is that something that is a little bit more common than maybe most people would assume in this world? And I'll open that up to either of you, but I'm curious about how common that is, or is that. Something that's maybe a little bit more unique for issues like this.
Dave: Pretty common. Lori and I over our careers, I mean, we have done a lot of work together, but I've worked with other Republican pollsters. Lori worked with other democratic pollsters on a wide range of different issues because to get anything done in our politics today, anything meaningful, really does require bringing together support from both sides of the aisle. So it's an imperative for conservation, but for lots of other subjects as well. You know, I think what this particular partnership brings to the table is for almost 20, well, 20, for 25 years now, Lori and I have been working together on these specific issues. So our collaboration isn't just sort of a Democrat plus a Republican. It's two folks who spend a lot of time studying public attitudes toward conservation, thinking about those partisan perspectives, but also building up some substantive knowledge and working, you know, as a team. And I think we've been fortunate to be pretty effective over that long period of time. We met when we had young children, and now they're all in college, so sort of shows how long this has been going on.
Dan: Thank you so much. We love talking about natural climate solutions at EESI and nature-based solutions. And this is not the first time we've featured the survey results on this. It's been part of briefings, and it's been events at UNFCCC negotiations, and it's been something that we're really happy to bring to our audience. So thank you so much Lori and Dave for joining our podcast, and we wish you all the best of luck, and thanks so much for joining us today. It's very cool.
Dave: Pleasure. Thank you very much.
Lori: Thank you.
Dan: Well, Alison, I feel like sometimes the first episode of a podcast season kind of feels a little wobbly, but I don't feel that way at all. That was a super interesting conversation. Such a great way to kick off the season. And the, you know, Lori and Dave, it's great their past collaboration. They've got tremendous chemistry, and it's really cool that they are willing to join forces time and again to bring good information about natural climate solutions to policy makers and the public. I guess one takeaway for me, based on the conversation, was the idea that there's a little something in natural climate solutions for everyone. If you're on one side of the political spectrum, you can look at it from one way and see just as many benefits as someone on the other side, whether it's farming or ranching or preventing wildfires, or forest management, access to parks, all of those natural climate solutions. One of the reasons we cover natural climate solutions so much at ESI is because it is genuinely one of those Win-Win-Win propositions. It's good for the environment, it's good for the economy, and it's good for the people who enjoy it. It's good for everybody, really, who has anything to do with natural climate solutions. And I think it's really great. It's really great that it didn't just come through in the poll. It overwhelmingly came through in the poll. And I think that was really positive, and looking forward to seeing that number 94% creep up a little bit higher the next time they do it.
Alison: I, for one, have never had a wobbly episode, so I'm just gonna let you speak for yourself on that one, but I would really like to thank our friends at US Nature4Climate, Francis and Nathan, who helped us get in touch with Lori and Davis and put together this episode. That was, I think, a great start to the new season. We always have a focus on bipartisan areas of compromise, but I think it feels especially important right now. And you know, I bet if they did the survey again today, the number would be even higher than 94% because if it was 86% in 2022 now we're at 94%, we've had a major wildfire and several other severe weather events since this survey came out little over six months ago now. So, you know, I think it might be even closer to 100% and there are so few things that almost 100% of people can agree on, I can definitely see why firefighters would be considered effective messengers on natural climate solutions and climate issues as they're on the front lines of climate impact. I think this was a really helpful conversation. It was great to see Republican and Democratic pollsters getting along so well, and I think that's probably a lot more common than a lot of people realize. If you want to learn more about EESI’s work on nature based solutions and natural climate solutions, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The climate conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
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