Thread by @mmildenberger

Will climate change change political behavior? In new @apsrjournal article, @chadhazlett and I find that experiencing a wildfire drives pro-environmental voting - but only in Democratic areas. Short 🧵 1/
cup.org/309PWte

The politics of climate change politics is tough. Leaders need to impose short-term policy costs to deliver long-term climate benefits. Today, the impacts of climate change are impacting Americans. Will this break the climate policymaking stalemate? 2/

Research is pretty mixed on this topic, as I recently reviewed with @peterdhowe, @mudfire and Brittany Shield in ERL. Also, most work focusses on public opinion, not on the ground political behavior 3/
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

In this new article, we fill that gap. We exploit the arbitrary timing of wildfires in CA to test whether experiencing a wildfire changes votes for climate-related ballot initiatives. They do! We see 5 to 6 percentage points vote share increases within 5km of recent fires. 🔥 4/

But the story is a bit more complicated: these effects are all concentrated in more Democratic areas of the state - Republican areas don't change their climate-related votes at all. 5/

What this likely means: for people who believe in climate change, lived experience increases willingness to support costly reforms. It is not surprising that ambitious climate reforms are becoming a core part of the Democratic party platform 6/

But if you don't believe in climate change, you won't interpret your lived experience as shaped by climate-change. And then, climate-related disasters aren't going to change your voting behaviors. 7/

Overall, our results emphasize importance of climate storytelling. Climate-related disasters won't move the political needle unless media and advocates tell effective stories that help public understand how climate change is shaping their lives. 8/8
cup.org/309PWte

PS: Happy to share a copy of article to anyone who can't access directly.