The Green Latino Vote

Fresh off his victory in health care reform, President Obama is wasting no time in moving on to one of his next goals: climate change policy.

The White House says it wants Congress to pass an energy and climate bill this year, but the debate is expected to be just as tense and drawn out as it was for health care. The president will likely once again be forced to compromise in order to secure key votes. Last summer, the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions and let companies trade permits to emit carbon, but legislation has stalled in the Senate, largely due to opposition from lawmakers representing coal and oil states.

As the 40th anniversary of Earth Day approaches on April 25th, Congress and the White House are already being bombarded with letters and calls for action by environmentalists. At the same time, recent polls show mounting public skepticism over the evidence of global warming due in part to allegations of shaky scientific research, as well as concerns about the cost of a transition to cleaner energy.

A recent Gallup poll shows 48 percent of Americans think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, up from 41 percent in 2009 and 31 percent in 1997, when Gallup first began asking about the issue. But as the Obama administration gears up for this debate, public opinion on the issue shows Hispanics bucking the national skepticism, according to the latest poll, coommissioned by the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). Conducted by Yale and George Mason universities, the poll found that 81 percent of Hispanics believe global warming is happening compared to only 69 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Some 62 percent of Hispanics said they thought climate change was “very bad,” while only 41 percent of non-Hispanic whites thought so. Hispanics were also more convinced about the scientific evidence of global warming, while many whites believed the science remains controversial.

When it comes to the government taking action, 66 percent of Hispanics said tackling climate change should be a “high” or “very high” priority, compared to only 48 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Some 41 percent of Hispanics said a “large scale effort” is required even if it has a big economic cost attached. An impressive 48 percent of Hispanics support the regulation of carbon emissions, compared to 28 percent of non-Hispanic whites. And an overwhelming 70 percent of Hispanics favor cap-and-trade legislation that places a limit on carbon emissions. Only 50 percent of non-Hispanic whites back the idea.

By contrast, only 17 percent of Hispanics support drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, compared to 29 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
“The Hispanic community has a deep tradition of environmental protection and haa approached the issue with less cynicism than other segments of the population,” says Adrianna Quintero, director of La Onda Verde, a Hispanic outreach arm of NRDC, one of the nations’ largest environmental groups.

While the poll results are “not surprising,” they are “reassuring,” she adds. “The Hispanic community is standing strong on the issue.”

Quintero and others attribute that to the climate debate being “less politicized” in other parts of the world, including Latin America, than in the U.S. She also credits more balanced handling of the issue in the Hispanic media, including TV coverage on Spanish language channels, Univision and Telemundo. “They make sure they get the full picture,” she says. “So people are not getting distracted by the politics behind this. They are getting the facts.” It helps that the median age of the Hispanic population is only 27.7, compared the national average of 36.8 years. Younger people tend to have more progressive attitudes about climate change, studies show. “They have grown up in an era where they see solutions to everything are in reach,” Quintero says.

Similar results were obtained in another poll commissioned by the National Latino Coalition On Climate Change (NLCCC) in Nevada, Colorado and Florida. “We saw an overwhelming majority of Latinos who thought the country should move ahead with a strong clean energy policy,” says Lillian Rodríguez López, vice-chair of NLCCC. The group’s poll found that a near majority of Latinos would be willing to pay a higher monthly utility bill ($10-25) for clean energy.

Hispanics are increasingly aware of environmental justice issues, such as clean air and clean water, due to high prevalence of certain illnesses, including asthma. “Clean air, clean water, and now clean energy. It all goes together in the same conversation,” Rodríguez López says.

The percentage of Hispanics living in areas where air pollution levels exceed federal air quality standards is consistently higher than it is for any other population,” NCLLL points out. A study by the National Coalition of Hispanic Health and Human Services Organizations, found that 71 percent of Latinos live in areas with high concentrations of ozone. Their children develop asthma at a rate 2.5 times more than non-Hispanic white children.

Twenty-two percent of Hispanics live below the poverty line and 13.9 million do not have health insurance. As a result, they could suffer more than other segments of the population in the event that floods, heat waves, and severe storms become more frequent as a result of global warming.

Hispanics are also more likely to be directly affected by the consequences of climate change on agriculture, where they comprise a majority of the labor force in states such as California, Florida, and Texas.

The White House says it expects the annual trend of rising gasoline prices in the summer to help swing the debate back in favor of a climate bill.

Though polls show Hispanics are not especially concerned about rising energy prices, non-Hispanic whites are much more sensitive to this.

The Obama administration is also hoping to reinforce its scientific message. A government report released earlier this year by the Obama administration makes it clear that climate change is already affecting the U.S. Hotter temperatures, an increase in heavy downpours and rising sea levels are among the effects of “unequivocal” warming, the analysis found. But explaining that to the public isn’t easy in the wake of recent revelations of errors in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scandal over alleged unethical bias at a British climate research unit, and an unusually cold and snowy winter in many parts of the U.S.

In an effort to shore up credibility of the IPCC, the United Nations has announced that an international commission will conduct an independent review of all the IPCC’s “processes and procedures.”

The global economy also continues to present a challenge for climate change action. According to a United Nations 2009 report on sustainable energy finance, global investments will have to reach $500 billion annually for the next 10 years in order to start bringing down greenhouse gas emissions.

Until the economic recession, there were strong upward trends in private investment in green energy production. In 2008, investment in renewable energy was, for the first time, greater than new investment in fossil fuels, hitting about $220 billion, according to Steven Cohen, Executive Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. But growth in the renewable energy sector fell as the financial crisis hit. In the first quarter of 2009, there was less than half the amount of private investment in green energy projects than in the same period of 2008. Government stimulus funding partially helped to compensate, but private sector investment in green energy is still considered risky by many financial professionals. “We need to develop and implement a way to make green energy profitable,” Cohen says. “This is easier said than done. First of all, we need a lot of money.”