04/26/2024

Poll Suggests Governor, Democrats Winning Climate Debate — for Now

For Gov. Jerry Brown, this has been a summer to remember. With negotiations over the state budget quickly and neatly sewn up in almost record time, he’s been able to focus instead on a national and international pilgrimage for action on climate change. And a new poll suggests he and his fellow Democrats are pretty much speaking what Californians want to hear.

The Wednesday night poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) finds strong support for not only the idea that climate change is linked to the state’s historic drought, but also equally robust support for a handful of legislative ideas to double down on the state’s response.

Sixty-one percent of likely voters — and 64 percent of all adults in the survey — agree that California needs to do its own thing to combat the effects of carbon emissions and not wait for action in Washington, D.C. And almost eight of every 10 state residents in the poll say the climate change threat is serious, with most (52 percent) calling it very serious.

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