Voters Want a Green Stimulus

J Mijin Cha (@jmijincha), Fellow, Worker Institute at Cornell University, Senior Fellow, Data for Progress

Daniel Aldana Cohen (@aldatweets), Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, University of Pennsylvania, and Senior Fellow, Data for Progress

Mark Paul (@markvinpaul), assistant professor of economics and environmental studies at the New College of Florida, and a senior fellow at Data for Progress

Julian Brave NoiseCat (@jnoisecat), Vice President of Policy & Strategy at Data for Progress

As the world reels from the COVID19 epidemic, we must support all efforts to keep people safe and healthy. That includes immediate actions to ensure free testing and treatment, and a stronger social welfare system to protect the millions of people whose livelihoods are being devastated as we write. Data for Progress polling has found that many measures, including monthly cash transfers and free testing and treatment are popular. But we cannot stop there. We also face a climate emergency. You can be sure that corporations and their political allies are already fighting over the contours of the inevitable stimulus funds that will go toward economic recovery. 

Planning the recovery should have started yesterday. Yes, fighting the pandemic must be the top priority, but the 2008 financial crisis and stimulus package taught us things move fast; often so fast that Corporate lobbyists and their political allies end up writing large swaths of the inevitable stimulus bills. We don’t want a corporate bailout. We want an economic recovery  that protects us from the worst impact of climate change, puts people over profits, and lifts up workers and frontline communities. And, we must learn from and improve upon the woefully insufficient 2008-2010 stimulus that resulted in a lackluster recovery that caused a decade of unnecessary pain and suffering for the broad working class. We need a much bigger stimulus, one that prioritizes economic security for Main Street while fore-fronting investment in low-carbon projects.

To meet this enormous challenge, we—along with several other climate and social policy experts—released a Green Stimulus proposal today that invests at least $2 trillion to protect our workers and communities and build a more just, more resilient future. This investment would create millions of family-sustaining green jobs, lift standards of living, invest in a low-carbon future, and ensure a controlling stake for the public in all private sector bailout plans. Money for decarbonization would also automatically renew until the economy reaches carbon-neutral and unemployment is below 3.5%.These investments would strengthen and stabilize our society and economy in the face of massive economic and societal challenges. Our proposal is also consistent with the idea of a Jobs Guarantee and a Green New Deal, though a true Job Guarantee would be permanent and would provide employment to all who seek it. 

A Green Stimulus is not only good policy, it’s good politics. Yes, we believe that attracting bipartisan support is possible, especially when we detail specific policy measures, as we argue below. But first, note that new Data for Progress polling, done this past week, reveals that there is currently broad support for an ambitious stimulus specifically targeted towards building the low-carbon future. Nearly half of all respondents support a $2 trillion, 10-year investment in clean energy and jobs, while less than a third of respondents are opposed. Seventy-three percent of self-identified Democrats and nearly a third of self-identified Republicans support multi-trillion dollar investment in clean energy and jobs. And over 60% of respondents under 45 supported this investment, which would have the biggest impact on their own futures.

This strong polling is especially noteworthy because respondents were polled right in the middle of catastrophic pandemic coverage. And the question included standard partisan talking points, mimicking a cable news exchange. Even under those conditions, there appears to be a substantial appetite for a massive investment in building the green economy. 

This polling reiterates that public investment in green solutions enjoys broad support. 

But Data for Progress polling on green industrial policy, conducted only two weeks prior, suggests that when you break up the idea of green investment into specific policy ideas, they are even more popular, which is especially important for crossing partisan divides. 

We looked at several specific examples of green technology, including justice-oriented measures. Virtually all of them enjoy majority support, in most cases at over 60% support. 

Moreover, more Republicans support than oppose investments in renewable energy, electric buses, underground high-voltage transmission, electric minivans and pickup trucks for rural and suburban areas, smart grid technology, retrofitting buildings with an emphasis on low-income housing, and battery technology.

Finally, as we talk about job creation, it’s important that we create not just jobs, but full employment with quality jobs that pay family sustaining wages, provide benefits, and career pathways. We polled these specific green investments were polled with language explicitly calling for union jobs—and they are still popular across the political spectrum.

In our open letter to Congress, we emphasize the need to dramatically expand the number of good, unionized jobs, and to locate apprenticeship programs in communities of color, low-income communities, and Indigenous communities, who should all benefit immediately from the Green Stimulus—and shape it, from below.  

We face a critical junction: either we invest in workers, communities, and a just, low-carbon future or we allow public funds to disappear into the blackhole of corporate greed. A Green Stimulus is not only good policies and good politics, it’s the right thing to do. 

Methedology

On March 18, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 2,507 likely voters nationally, using web-panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ± 1.9 percent.