Last week, Pew released a survey with the headline ‘Support for Alternative Energy and Offshore Drilling.’ The piece begins, “The public continues to favor a wide range of government policies to address the nation’s energy supply…”

That is accurate, but it doesn’t get at the most striking data.  The most important finding in the survey is the fact that clean energy and mass transit investments are vastly more popular than nuclear investments and offshore drilling.

Here is how Pew presents the data (Figure 1):

As a mini-case study on how informational graphics can add significant meaning to this sort of data, I’ve created a few simple charts.

This chart (Figure 2) shows the approval and disapproval numbers for the four policy options:

And this chart (Figure 3) shows the net approval numbers for the four policy options:

Presenting the information in text only format, as Pew chose to do in Figure 1, leaves the reader to their own devices to identify the most compelling data.  While the data is technically accurate, it fails to bring the meaning of the data to the forefront.  Pew’s accompanying analysis of the polling data also somehow fails to identify the massive gap in net approval for the policies they surveyed.

Creating a simple chart (Figure 2) based on the data itself adds significant value to the presentation of the data, especially for the casual reader.  The reader can tell at a glance that clean energy investments are significantly more popular than polluting energy sources, and that unpopularity follows the opposite pattern.

Going one step further and doing simple arithmetic to determine the net approval for each of the policies in the survey, as I’ve done with Figure 3, brings the most striking data to the forefront.  The fact that more than 50% of Americans support a variety of policies to produce-more or consume-less energy is not, in itself, especially meaningful.  But the fact that the net approval for some of these policies is 40-60%, while it is barely 10% for others, is fairly compelling.

Here is LCV’s television ad:

Here is the document that backs it up:

backupenergyjobs –

Via Yglesias, Brad Plumer writes:

Via Julia Whitty, here’s a new study from a trio of Columbia psychologists that tries to settle this question. Test subjects were broken up into two groups, and each group was allowed to pick between pricier and cheaper versions of various items like airline tickets. Group A was told that the more expensive items included the price of a “carbon tax,” whose proceeds would go toward clean-energy development. Group B was told that the costlier items included the price of a “carbon offset,” whose proceeds would go toward clean-energy development. Exact same policy, just different names for each.

You can guess what happened next. In the “offset” group, Democrats, Republicans, and independents all flocked toward the pricier item. They were perfectly happy to pay an extra surcharge to fund CO2 reduction—even Republicans gushed about the benefits of doing so. Not only that, but most of the group supported making the surcharge mandatory. In the “tax” group, however, Democrats were the only ones willing to pay for the costlier item. Republicans in this group were much more inclined to grumble about how much more expensive the tax made things. Labels really do matter.

Here is the study:

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On January 19th, Massachusetts voters will have a choice between one Senate candidate who has a reasonable plan to address climate change, and one who has no plan whatsoever.

Here is Coakley’s well thought out energy reform plan, Repowering America:

energy_whitepaper_111609 –

And here is Coakley accepting the endorsements of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Sierra Club and Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters:

Meanwhile, here is Brown’s full position on issues related to energy and the environment (h/t The Green Miles):

I support common-sense environment policy that will help to reduce pollution and preserve our precious open spaces. I realize that without action now, future generations will be left to clean up the mess we leave. In order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, I support reasonable and appropriate development of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal and improved hydroelectric facilities. I oppose a national cap and trade program because of the higher costs that families and businesses would incur.

Hopefully Massachusetts Democrats can overcome the apparent enthusiasm gap and elect a clean energy proponent to fill Ted Kennedy’s former seat.

Wildlife Promise:

But a new poll released by the National Wildlife Federation is revealing that Swifthack has failed to move the needle with voters…

… Among those who said they had read or seen something about the stolen emails, 53% said it did not affect their view at all. The remainder was largely split — 26% said it made them less likely to support the U.S. taking action to reduce global warming while 20% said it made them more likely to support action.

Even a harshly framed attack about the emails failed to influence voters in any significant way … 63% still say they believe global warming is happening.

Here are the full results of the poll:

122109PollMemo –

This looks interesting:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu will announce on Monday an international plan to deploy clean technology in developing countries, a $350 million, five-year effort that will include everything from putting solar lanterns in poor households to promoting advanced energy-efficient appliances worldwide, administration officials said.

The Climate Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative is an attempt by the United States and other industrialized nations to help curb energy consumption in countries that will help determine if global greenhouse emissions keep rising or level off.

“No matter what pledges are made here in Copenhagen, global emissions cannot be cut without widespread deployment of clean energy technologies,” said Paul W. Bledsoe, a spokesman with the D.C.-based National Commission on Energy Policy.

Lots of folks have taken note of new polling today showing John McCain potentially in trouble in next year’s Arizona Republican primary for his Senate seat.

Matt Yglesias flags an important aspect of this:

This seems like pretty much terrible news for the world. The most likely path between Point A and Senate passage of a reasonable climate bill is for McCain to rediscover his interest in the issue. But that’s not the sort of thing a Senator worried about a right-wing primary challenge is likely to do.

This is exactly right. And of course, a Politico story (where else?) provides the evidence:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.”

This should not be a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to McCain’s statements on climate legislation since last year’s election.

Steve Benen checked in with a McCain spokesperson on this and got an absurd response:

Asked for an explanation, McCain spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said, “This really hasn’t been done in a bipartisan fashion.”

I see. The climate bill is being pushed by a Dem (Kerry), a Republican (Graham), and an Independent (Lieberman), but the problem is that the effort is too partisan. Follow-up question for Brooke Buchanan: “Huh?”

Predictably, arbiter of conservative-leaning beltway conventional wisdom Chuck Todd blames President Obama for not reaching out enough.

There is a larger point to all of this though. Primary challenges are an extremely effective way to hold ‘moderate’ Members of Congress to the party line. Probably the single most effective way to do so, I’d say.

Arlen Specter is a great example of this (full disclosure: I can’t stand Arlen Specter):

Specter’s overall party loyalty score since becoming a Democrat — counting votes both before and after the primary challenge — is 87 percent. This contrasts with the 44 percent of the time that he broke ranks to side with the Democratic on Contentious Votes while still a member of the Republican Party. He’s basically been behaving like a mainline, liberal Democrat.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to imagine that this process has been strengthened, accentuated, catalyzed, by Joe Sestak’s primary challenge. You can draw a pretty clear line in the sand from when Specter went from sorta, kinda Democrat to OMG totally! Democrat, and it coincides with the date that Sestak announced his challenge.

Continuing this trend, Specter called for an exit strategy in Afghanistan just yesterday.

This chart couldn’t make the Specter example any clearer:

The obvious lesson here is that Democrats should mount aggressive primary challenges against Democrats who are getting in the way of healthcare reform, clean energy legislation, the employee free choice act and job-creating stimulus provisions. Defenders of the status quo will maintain that this tactic is more effective in places like Pennsylvania than it would be in places like Nebraska, Arkansas, Indiana or Louisiana, and they are probably right. But the way we deal with such Senators now doesn’t seem to be working very well, so I’d be more than willing to give this other strategy a shot.

Teryn Norris & Devon Swezey:

You know the world is changing when the president’s first trip to Asia is defined by a new U.S. foreign policy dubbed “strategic reassurance” – convincing China that the United States has no intention of containing its growing power or endangering its foreign investments. As the New York Times put it, “When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay respects to his banker.”

You also know times are changing when China, the world’s greatest polluter, and other Asian nations are poised to dominate the burgeoning global clean-tech industry by out-investing the United States. That’s the conclusion of a large new report we co-authored called “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant,” released this week by the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Here is the report:

I mentioned last week that Senator Graham had been censured by a local County Republican Party for his willingness to work with Senator Kerry on energy legislation. Now another South Carolina Republican party, after initially planning to move forward in the same fashion, has decided to hold off… for now:

Berkeley County Republicans showed up at their executive committee meeting Monday night with a similar resolution, changing the name of the county from Charleston to Berkeley.Linda Riney of Cross urged the approximately 30 committee members present to pass it.

“How can we defend being conservatives if we just sit by with our mouth shut?” she said.

Chairman Tim Callanan of Daniel Island urged the motion be tabled, saying Graham’s chief of staff called him Monday afternoon and offered to set up a meeting next week.

“It seems to be a reasonable request,” said Callanan, adding he believes Graham has some serious explaining to do.

Joe Kaplinger of Jamestown, who made the motion, said Graham was too late. “He’s had plenty of time to answer our questions.

State Sen. Paul Campbell, R-Goose Creek, said he disagrees with Graham on the energy bill but urged the committee to give him a chance to speak for himself.

“I just think it sends the wrong message to censure him when we’re trying to work with him on a grant to get 600 jobs,” Campbell said. “To act tonight is premature without giving him a chance to speak.”

The committee, on a 3-1 voice vote, tabled the resolution until the January meeting, but the consensus was the censure would resurface if they’re not happy after talking with Graham.

The Republican party is quickly becoming a caricature of itself, purging anyone who isn’t a hateful, ignorant science-hater. While it is good for Democrats politically, it is a largely negative development for the discourse and the country as a whole. It is hard to have a reasonable and intelligent debate when one of the two major political parties is completely unreasonable.

(Hat tip: Think Progress).

Following the lead of fellow Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds, Senator Jim Webb is starting to sound like a Republican on energy policy:

“In its present form I would not vote for it,” he said. “I have some real questions about the real complexities on cap and trade.”

“That piece of legislation right now is something that is going to cause a lot of people a lot of concern,” he said.

He would much rather pass a nuclear subsidy bill, apparently:

On Monday, Webb and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) proposed their own energy bill that would double the use of nuclear power through the country over the next 20 years.

The legislation would spend $20 billion over the next two decades to fund loan guarantees, worker training, research into nuclear power, advanced biofuels, electric vehicles, solar power, and nuclear fuel recycling. Both the senators’ home states – Virginia and Tennessee – have significant nuclear power plants.

Perhaps we should think more carefully about who we allow to stick that big D — and all of the $ and support that comes with it — next to their name.