Lefties tend to be more concerned about climate change than
right-wingers. I think the media often exaggerates this gap, but it’s
still a consistent finding in surveys.
One country where this divide is strong is the United States. Pew survey
data shows that 88% of Democrats were “Sad about what was happening to
the Earth”. This share was just 50% among Republicans. A much smaller
share were anxious about the future or were motivated to do more to
address climate change.
That sounds like bad news. Progress will inevitably be slow – or
non-existent – if a big chunk of the country is blocking action.
But the data tells a different story. Republicans might not be big on
climate, but they’re moving ahead on clean energy anyway.
[Stats deleted]
Red states aren’t building clean energy to solve climate change. At
least, that’s not the primary reason. They’re doing it for economics.
Make it cheap and easy, and it’ll often get built.
This article by Sarah Mills – who studies US energy politics – goes into much more detail on this. Here’s a quick summary.
Many red states have extremely large wind and solar resources. They lie
in the USA’s ‘wind belt’: which means high capacity factors and good returns on investment. The economics work out well for landowners. They
make extra cash, with little disruption to their farms apart from dead
birds. And this income is much more stable than agriculture, which is vulnerable to poor harvests and erratic weather.
It also provides economic benefits to communities. Renewable energy
developers pay property taxes, which boosts public funds. These states
also have low electricity prices well below the US average (not all of
this is explained by renewable energy generation though – California, by contrast, has very high prices).
Now, it’s not just about free-market economics here. Policy does play an important role. First, regulations and building restrictions affect how
quickly renewable projects can be built. On this, red states seem to
doing better. As Noah Smith wrote in a recent article: Blue states don’t build. Second, red states have – ironically – been the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s IRA package. National – not just state-level – policy matters too.
But the headline point is that people don’t need to be interested in
climate to be supportive of clean energy. Support for clean energy is
strong, even on the political right. But it’s for reasons unrelated to climate – economic or employment opportunities, energy security, or
lower energy bills.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/red-states-renewables
Good to see that even Republicans are green transitioning these days.
But I think Biden's IRA pumped too much money to the ungrateful bastards
in these red states. They're going to feel the benefits in a few years
and then attribute them to drill-baby-drill.
*Rolls eyes*
--
“We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
-- Nikki Haley
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