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Economy

Poll: Americans Broadly Skeptical of Climate Pledges

But they do want corporations to step up.

A BP sign.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

From BP to Shein, businesses are promising that they’re greener than ever. But Americans are skeptical these pledges are anything but greenwashing, a term for deceptive advertising practices around sustainability that was formally added to the dictionary last year. Perhaps with good reason, too: Of 702 companies that have made net-zero targets and were scrutinized by Net Zero Tracker, two-thirds hadn’t actually offered details on how they plan to reach those goals.

A majority of Americans (64%) think corporations’ pledges around climate change are just for appearances and that they won’t stick to their promises, the inaugural Heatmap Climate Poll, published Thursday, found. But Americans do want corporations to step up: Sixty-seven percent of Americans feel that large corporations have an important role to play in mitigating the effects of global warming.

Heatmap's findings were consistent across political parties. Sixty-three percent of Democrats distrusted climate pledges, compared to 61% of Republicans and 69% of independents. The findings were also fairly consistent across incomes, geographies, and education levels.

They are also optimistic about future action. When Americans consider which entity will have the greatest positive impact on the climate in the next five years, big businesses and corporations were ranked second, just behind individuals and ahead of the federal government. A plurality of Republicans ranked corporations first.

This comes as something of a surprise considering the hard line the Republican Party has taken recently against corporate environmental, social, and governance practices — otherwise known as ESG. Conservatives argue businesses are being unfairly pressured to make overtures to climate activists. Still, a plurality of Republicans are optimistic about corporations’ ability to make a difference on climate change.

Americans also expressed a high level of concern around pollutants, the majority of which are generated by industry, agriculture, and big business. Over 40% of respondents individually ranked air pollution, water pollution, and plastic pollution as “an extremely serious problem”; 39% said the same for toxic waste (the Heatmap Climate Poll was conducted shortly after the toxic chemical spill caused by a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio).

The impression that businesses are powerful climate actors also carried over into concerns about their potential to serve as obstacles to renewable and sustainable solutions to address climate change. Forty-one percent of Americans (including 37% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats) characterized lobbyists and special interests having too much power in Washington as being an “extremely serious problem.” Just under a third of Americans (30%, including 19% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats) felt that big corporations standing in the way of the government taking action we need on climate change is another “extremely serious” barrier.

The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 Americans adults was conducted via online panels from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. Read more about the topline results here.

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Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

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Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

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Hotspots

The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

  • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
  • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
  • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
  • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
  • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
  • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

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