For more information on Dr. Maibach’s work visit, https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/. To get involved in IPL’s Faith Climate Justice Voter Campaign and sign-up to join our peer-to-peer texting campaign visit, https://interfaithpowerandlight.salsalabs.org/joinafaithvotertextbank/index.html.
On October 12th, IPL was privileged to host a webinar with Ed Maibach, Director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication and Co-winner of the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication.
In the lead up to the 2020 elections, Dr. Maibach shared how his research is finding that more people than ever before are concerned about climate change. Since the 2016 elections the number of voters who identified climate change as their top priority increased 9%. Maibach and his team also found that 87% of registered voters support funding more research into renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and that 59% of registered voters would support a U.S. president declaring global warming a national emergency – an increase of 14 percentage points from April 2019.
Dr. Maibach’s work has been foundational in IPL’s Faith Climate Justice Voter Campaign. His joint research with the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication allowed IPL to identify individuals who are likely to be concerned about the impacts of global warming. We overlaid this information with voting data to identify infrequent, faith voters who care about climate change. Now, IPL is reaching 150,000 of these individuals through our volunteer-driven peer-to-peer texting program to share information about voting safely and ensure they cast their ballot in the 2020 election.
