Climate Justice Survey: 69% Oppose the Laws of Thermodynamics

Guest “If wishes were horses, we’d all get ponies for Christmas” by David Middleton

From the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication…

Peer-Reviewed Article · Jan 23, 2025

Americans’ support for climate justice

By Jennifer Carman, Danning (Leilani) Lu, Matthew Ballew, Joshua Low, Marija Verner, Seth Rosenthal, Kristin Barendregt-Ludwig, Gerald Torres, Michel Gelobter, Kate McKenney, Irene Burga, Mark Magaña, Saad Amer, Romona Taylor Williams, Montana Burgess, Grace McRae, Annika Larson, Manuel Salgado, Leah Ndumi Kioko, Jennifer Marlon, Kathryn Thier, John Kotcher, Edward Maibach and Anthony Leiserowitz

Filed under: Beliefs & Attitudes, Policy & Politics and Behaviors & Actions

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article, “Americans’ support for climate justice,” in the journal Environmental Science & Policy.

Climate change is unfair. 

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In collaboration with climate justice advocates and experts in the U.S. and Canada, we measured and explored predictors of Americans’ climate justice beliefs and intentions to engage in related behaviors as part of the Climate Change in the American Mind survey (n = 1,011).

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Communication about climate justice should describe specific ways that climate change harms some people more than others, as well as the practical benefits of climate justice initiatives. For example, investments in infrastructure for vulnerable communities can reduce everyone’s risks from climate change impacts such as flooding. Moreover, many existing policies that promote climate justice – such as green job training and reskilling programs, transitioning to renewable energy, and home weatherization – are already popular among the U.S. public, so linking climate justice concepts to these benefits may build support.

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The full article is available here for those with a subscription to Environmental Science & Policy, and a public postprint is available here on the Open Science Framework.

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YPCCC

Maybe these folks haven’t been keeping up with current events, but Climate Justice got its @$$ kicked on November 5, 2024.

Exit Poll: Climate Voters were Harris’s Strongest Supporters.

Data from the AP/NORC exit poll of over 120,000 general election voters found that 7% of voters said climate change was the most important issue facing the country (up from 4% in 2020). Additionally, the Environmental Voter Project’s analysis of exit polling data found that these climate-first voters supported Kamala Harris by a 10:1 margin, which was larger than Harris’s support from any other issue constituency group. In some swing states, such as North Carolina, climate-first voters supported Harris by a staggering 48:1 margin, which was even more than her support from registered Democrats.

Environmental Voter Project

Now let’s get back to the Climate Justice fantasyland. 69% of registered voters, allegedly surveyed in spring 2023, support repealing the Laws of Thermodynamics:

Show of hands: Who thinks this could be accomplished without amending those pesky Laws of Thermodynamics?

Transitioning the U.S. economy (including electric utilities, transportation, buildings, and industry) from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050: 69% of registered voters, including 93% of liberal Democrats, 84% of moderate/conservative Democrats, 58% of liberal/moderate Republicans, and 30% of conservative Republicans.

YPCCC

While it’s true that solar panels and windfarms don’t create energy, they can only convert sunlight and wind energy into electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing just right. Unless we’re supposed to just do without electricity when the weather doesn’t cooperate, a 100% “clean energy” economy would require a serious revision of the First Law of Thermodynamics.

100% “clean energy” can’t work without nuclear power and the authors of this survey oppose nuclear power because they view it as “inherently dirty, dangerous and costly.”

The Center for Climate Change Communication

The Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) is a research organization focused on promoting a left-of-center narrative around climate change. 4C is part of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

4C conducts research on public perceptions of climate change and then uses that research to advocate for environmentalist policy through communications with government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations. ¹

History

George Mason University professors Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf founded 4C in 2007 while pursuing a research partnership with Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

The following year, 4C conducted its first Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) national public opinion poll with the support of the Yale program. ² Starting in 2009, 4C turned its attention to portraying climate change as an issue of public health. ³ 4C runs a Program on Climate and Health, an initiative that argues that fossil fuel use is leading to climate change and unspecified “health harms” and advocates for the use of renewable energy. ⁴

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Partnerships

Center for Climate Change Communication has collaborated with a number of left-of-center organizations to support its policy and research agendas, receiving support from groups including Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the environmentalist Town Creek Foundation. ¹⁵ 4C has used funding from the Rockefeller Family Fund since 2016 in order to fund policy advocacy initiatives related to 4C’s environmentalist research. ¹⁵

4C has also partnered with a number of federal government agencies, including the National Park Service (NPS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Beginning in 2012, 4C partnered with NPS to hire interns to communicate left-of-center theories about the impact of climate change on national parks to park visitors. ¹⁶ 4C’s other government partnerships have been used to fuel and public opinion research projects in support of environmentalism. ¹⁵

In 2008 and 2012, 4C conducted national surveys with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) which concluded that “local public health departments are seeing increases in climate change-related health problems.” ¹⁷¹⁸

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

The Center for Climate Change Communication was a cosigner on an April 2021 letter to President Joe Biden that asked the administration to promote weather dependent wind and solar power systems and “end the fossil fuel era.” The letter also advised the president to “Phase out nuclear energy as an inherently dirty, dangerous and costly energy source.”  ¹⁹

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and from 1990 until 2021 accounted for 20 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ²⁰

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Influence Watch

The April 2021 letter to Sleepy Joe only advocated for wind, solar and Communism…

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication are left-wing activist groups. They partner up with NOAA, NASA, NSF, etc. to promote an their left-wing agenda (DOGE time!) and they oppose nuclear energy.

Back to the survey

The detailed survey results can be found in Climate Change in the American Mind: Climate Justice, Spring 2023 (Carman et al., 2023). This is from the introduction:

Climate justice has become an important part of federal climate policy in the United States, with efforts like the Justice40 Initiative and the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) being developed to increase federal funding to historically underserved communities and find ways to “leave no one behind”3 in the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.

Carman et al., 2023

Sounds like more work for the DOGE boys!

These gems are from Appendix I of Carman et al., 2023. The data tables are from their report; the commentary and memes are the work of this author:

Who pays for crap like this?

Funding Sources

The research was funded by the Schmidt Family Foundation, the U.S. Energy Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Grantham Foundation, and King Philanthropies.

YPCCC

U.S. Energy Foundation?

The Energy Foundation, also known as the United States Energy Foundation, is a left-of-center “pass through” charitable foundation founded by and supported by a network of left-wing organizations. The Foundation began in January 1991 as a $20 million collaborative between the Pew Charitable Trusts, Rockefeller family foundations, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and has subsequently grown in partnerships and funding. ¹ The Energy Foundation describes itself as a nonpartisan “grantmaker” with a focus on building a “new energy economy.”² In reality, it is a medium for bundling vast sums of money from donors to far-left political causes, under the guise of philanthropy.

The Energy Foundation was involved in the funding scandal in 2015 which led to the resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D).

Origins

The Energy Foundation was conceived as early as 1989, according to Adele Simmons, the former president of the MacArthur Foundation. It was established to be a “pass through” nonprofit, emphasizing strategic grants to groups able to influence energy regulatory policy. According to the group’s “strategic assumptions,” “intelligent philanthropy can influence energy policy with multi-billion dollar payoffs.” ³

The Energy Foundation was founded by Hal Harvey in 1991, who served as the organization’s president until 2002. Harvey has a history of left-wing environmental activism. In his announcement of the creation of the Energy Foundation, he referenced the recent First Gulf War: “At a time of grave danger and volatility in the Middle East, it is worrisome that the United States is increasing its dependence on foreign oil, especially so because there are other proven alternatives.”⁴

Harvey also worked as founder and CEO of ClimateWorks Foundation from 2008-2011, and served as Environment Program Director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – both significant financial supporters of the Energy Foundation. ⁵

In 1999, the Packard Foundation helped to establish Energy Foundation China, with offices in Beijing. ⁶ In 2020, the Energy Foundation China separated from the United States Energy Foundation whilst retaining the legacy EIN number. ⁷

Influence Watch

This is all just one giant left-wing Enviromarxist political activist money laundering operation. I can’t wait until the DOGE boys cut their ties to taxpayer funding…

I actually had to trick the Google AI. When I Googled with “taxpayer funding,” the AI reported that the organizations are not taxpayer-funded.

Back to reality

The world will not transition “from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050” or by 2100.

Life will go on and…

References

Carman, J., Ballew, M., Lu, D., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Goddard, E., Low, J., Marlon, J., Verner, M., Lee, S., Myers, T., Goldberg, M., Badullovich, N., Mason, T., Aguilar, A., Ongelungel, S. M., Sahlin, K., Sanchez, C., Burga, I., Magaña, M., Amer, S., Williams, R.T., Burgess, M., McRae, G., Fekede, M., Salgado, M., Larson, A., Barendregt-Ludwig, K., Gelobter, M., & Torres, G. (2023). Climate Change in the American Mind: Climate Justice, Spring 2023. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Carman, J. P., Lu, D., Ballew, M., Low, J., Verner, M., Rosenthal, S. A., Barendregt-Ludwig, K., Torres, G., Gelobter, M., McKenney, K., Burga, I., Magaña, M., Amer, S., Williams, R. T., Burgess, M., McRae, G., Larson, A., Salgado, M., Kioko, L. N., Marlon, J., Thier, K., Kotcher, J., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2025). Americans’ support for climate justice. Environmental Science & Policy, 163, 103976. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103976

Lomborg, Bjorn. Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Volume 156, 2020, 119981, ISSN 0040-1625, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981.