Transcript of YouTube Video: Why Isn’t the Climate Movement Voting? | Nathaniel Stinnett | TED

I've worked in politics for over 20

years and one of the biggest barriers we

face when addressing the climate crisis

is a lack of political will to enact all

the climate solutions that we already

have whether it's energy permitting

pollution regulation tax codes building

codes you name it the reason so little

is getting done is often because it's

easier to win elections By ignoring the

climate crisis rather than addressing it

in the United States and that's my focus

today much of this is due to political

spending by fossil fuel companies and

other special interests and currently

there just aren't enough climate voters

in the United States to overcome that

spending and get politicians to do what

science tells us is

necessary I believe however that we can

overcome this problem and we can

dramatically increase the number of

climate voters and that we can do so

without having to convince millions of

people to start caring about climate

change in fact we may not even have to

talk about climate at all the problem is

this we don't have enough climate voters

in the United States and that's largely

because millions of

environmentalists don't bother to vote

for instance in the state of Georgia 66%

of registered voters voted in the 2020

presidential election but according to

voter models only

58% of climate voters voted that's an 8%

undervote from people who care about

climate change in a state where the

election was only decided by 0 two

percentage points another example in

Pennsylvania and Nevada two crucially

important swing States people who

skipped the last midterm election were

twice as likely to list climate as a top

priority as people who said they were

going to vote in that election in short

the climate movement isn't

voting and this has a real impact on the

electorate when we look back at Exit

polling data from the 2020 presidential

election ultimately only 4% of Voters

listed climate change as their top

priority 22 midterm polls showed the

same thing

4% and when so few voters prioritize

climate change two really important

things start happening first it becomes

incredibly hard to elect climate leaders

but second even when climate leaders do

win elections it isn't like they can

then just snap their fingers and get

everything they want done no they still

need to pick and choose what to spend

their political capital on and they

ain't going to spend it on the thing

that only 4% of Voters list as a top

priority and here's the final reason why

this this lack of voter demand for

climate leadership is so

problematic politicians know

whether you vote or

not that's right who you vote for is

secret but whether you vote or not in

the United States that's public

record and with limited time and limited

money the most important decision any

political campaign makes is who to talk

to and who to

ignore and when you literally have

public voter files that tell you by name

and street address which people have a

history of voting in the election you're

trying to

win well who do you think political

campaigns talk

to likely

voters and who do you think they poll to

figure out what issues to

prioritize likely

voters and the non-voters well they get

ignored and I know that sounds cynical

but let's be

honest does Starbucks care about people

who don't drink coffee

no does Toyota Market cars to little

kids who aren't old enough to drive

no companies Market their products to

people who are likely to buy them and

politicians Market themselves to people

who are likely to

vote and they literally know who those

voters are by name and street address

because it is public

record all right so why is this relevant

to the climate movement

because remember when we look at the

people who are

voting very few of them list climate as

their top priority but when we look at

the non-voters the people who campaigns

typically ignore well it turns out that

millions of them do care deeply about

climate change in fact at the

environmental voter project the

nonprofit I founded we estimate that as

many as 8 million climate concerned

Americans skipped the 2020 presidential

election 8

million in an election where the

Electoral College was decided by just

44,000 voters in three

states in

short the climate movement isn't

voting and this is having a significant

impact we don't have a political

persuasion

problem we have a voter turnout

problem and as frustrating as that is

I'd like to suggest to you that it's

also an enormous

opportunity because we live at a moment

in

time where it's become almost impossible

to change people's opinions about

anything but especially climate

change yet these millions of non-voting

environmentalists they don't need their

opinions changed they just need their

behavior nudged so they start

voting and I won't claim that's easy of

course it's not

easy but it is

easier and it is also

testable because the existence of public

voter

files means that you can run messaging

experiments and then after the election

look up and see which ones actually got

environmentalists to start voting

and so that's the focus of our work at

the environmental voter

project we focus on identifying millions

of non-voting

environmentalists and then using

non-partisan messaging to turn them into

new voters and eventually consistent

voters it's a three-step process first

we need to find these non-voting

environmentalists now obviously we can't

interview every single American but we

can poll huge numbers of people isolate

the ones who list climate as their top

priority and then build highly accurate

models to find other people like them

step two we need to get them to start

voting and to do that behavioral science

tells us the best way to get an

environmentalists to vote is not to talk

about climate change

in fact we shouldn't even try to

convince them of the importance of

voting instead we should treat them as

social animals who are trying to fit

into societal Norms rather than as

rational animals who need to be

convinced of the value of their one vote

and so we use techniques like fomo fear

of missing out telling environmentalists

that each year more and more of their

peers are voting so don't be left behind

or will knock on their door ask if they

intend to vote most people will be

embarrassed and they'll say yes and then

we'll follow up with them right before

the election remind them of that pledge

and equate the act of voting with

whether they're an honest person who

keeps their promises or

not we will even mail people copies of

their personal voting

histories oh really yeah

pretty aggressive

huh well so is the climate

crisis and this stuff

works these norm-based messages and

other strategies have increased turnout

among our Target voters by as much as

1.8 percentage points in general

elections 3.6 percentage points in

primaries and 5.7 percentage points in

local elections and those are huge

numbers in this business

I mean 1 or 2% is everything in

politics and the final step is to build

long-term voting habits and to do that

you can't just talk to these

environmentalists once every two years

when there's a big federal election

going on no we are active in over 250

elections each year federal state and

local because yes voting can become

habitual and remember those public voter

files

well they're not

static once we get an environmentalist

to vote it almost immediately becomes

public record and then dozens of

campaigns race to start talking to that

environmentalist because they're now a

voter and they start getting pulled too

to figure out what issues they care

about

ultimately this is how we build an

Unstoppable block of climate voters

that can move policymaking across the

political

spectrum because even in this

hyperarid do they all like winning

elections I mean nothing nothing

motivates a politician more than the

prospect of winning or losing an

election so they always go where the

voters are

it's just the brutal arithmetic of how

democracy works either you go where the

votes are or you don't get to be a

politici so now it's incumbent Upon Us

in the climate movement to build this

Unstoppable block of climate voters and

it's increasingly clear that we can do

so without having to convince millions

of people to change their minds about

climate

change in fact we may not even need to

talk about climate at all

thank you