Climate & Energy
Tracking public opinion on the environment and natural resources.
As city, state, and regional leaders address climate change, understanding what the public wants and believes is fundamental to implementing sound policy. Intertwined in those policy choices are the cost, availability, and sustainability of energy sources for residents and businesses alike. We have been polling on climate and energy in Massachusetts since 2011 and continue to track these issues as they increase in priority and urgency.
Polling is an act of political resistance. It agglomerates the messy and inconvenient opinions of everyday people, kneads them into a whole, and forces them through the door into the air-conditioned echo chambers of political elites. This is not newly true, it’s just newly apparent.” That’s from a CommonWealth Magazine piece I wrote early this year, arguing why polling is more important now than ever. A few readers called it a polling manifesto. I’ll take it.