 So good afternoon everybody, thanks for joining us and this is the third and final event of a series of three web events that are marking the release of eight reports on the topic of North American climate policy. I'm Brendan Boyd, I'm assistant professor of political science at McEwen University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I'll be monitoring today's event on the topic of US Canada public opinion and urban climate governance. These events are a product of the 2020-2021 North American colloquium on climate policy. The North American colloquium is a collaborative venture between the University of Ford School of Public Policy, particularly its international policy center. It's also involves the University of Toronto and the Autonomous National University of Mexico. So it was established in 2018 and it brings together leading academics and analysts as well as practitioners from Mexico, Canada and the United States to address key public policy issues that are faced all three countries and this year of course the issue was climate change. So these events and reports on the topic of North American climate policy have also enjoyed generous support from the Meany family foundation. And so today we're going to talk about two different papers. First off, we have a paper by Eric LaChapelle and Christopher Bork, which is called a decade of comparative climate in American public or sorry, Canadian and American public opinion on climate change. And then we also have city powers and the governance of urban GHG emissions in the US and Canada, which is a paper by Sarah Hughes from the University of Michigan. So just I'm going to take I guess what we're going to do today is I'll introduce you all sort of talk really briefly very, very briefly about the papers quickly and then we'll quickly turn it over to the authors to talk about their papers. Then after that I will provide a few questions to the authors and then we'll finish up with some questions from the audience. First of all, I think in terms of the LaChapelle and Borex paper I think it's really important because it gets us past some of the broad sort of caricatures or stereotypes that we have about, you know, public opinion in Canada and the US right. It starts to dig into that and the takeaway for me is that although there's a lot of evidence there that you know could appear frustrating to advocates or other people that are looking at pushing climate policy. What we see is that there is some convergence around public opinion, although that hasn't translated into policy yet. That really speaks to the importance of collaboration amongst the two countries and also really speaks to the importance of this initiative around North American climate policy. In terms of the second paper I think it really highlights the importance of multi-level or polycentric governance and you know we kind of consistently need to fight that pull to focus on the national spotlight where the debates are big and large and you know can kind of sort of push out some of the more local action that's going on on climate change. And I think the main takeaway that I got from this is that what we're really looking for here when we look at municipal governance is smart practices rather than best practices because there's not going to be necessarily one best practice. But we can learn potentially from what some municipalities have done. So with that brief introduction I'm going to turn it over to Eric and Chris to provide some comments and reflection on their paper. They will then be followed by Sarah's. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that introduction, Brendan. First I want to thank Josh and Barry and everyone involved in developing this NAC project. It's been a lot of fun to be part of this great group of scholars, and I'm very happy to be here today to present some neat comparative data that this project is a part of. So for over more than a decade or so. Chris and I have done extensive cross border comparative polling across Canada and the United States, under the guise of the American and Canadian surveys on energy and the environment. So Chris is located at Muhlenburg College and myself at the University of Montreal. So a lot of polls have happened at least once every fall, and they have taken on a number of different iterations, depending on the year and what's going on in climate policy and climate politics, we might focus on carbon pricing. We did a few deep dives I guess you could call them on carbon pricing, looking at the effects of weather adaptation for example. So this year we always ask a standard set of questions on beliefs and policy support that help us track the state of attitudes in Canada and in the United States with respect to climate change. And so our project is very much in line with the spirit of this North American colloquium forum. Maybe by situating at a high level, our contribution to this colloquium in the broader context of research on attitudes towards climate and energy issues. As many of you know, much of the research so of course not all on public attitudes toward climate change is conducted in the United States and there's a large growing literature, exponentially so on US climate attitudes but also other parts of the world such as advanced countries. And we know from this research that one of the underlying factors that structure attitudes on energy and climate is partisanship in line with this research and others. We also find that a defining feature of climate attitudes in Canada and the United States is partisanship and I think this is important because we're able to kind of see to what extent do the dynamics we see in the United States. To what extent are these found in other areas of the world. And so partisanship is an important feature of Canadian climate attitudes. In fact, what strikes me most about the work Chris and I have done over the past 10 years is just how similar public dynamics are in both countries or the public opinion dynamics are in both countries. So let's take for example, climate change beliefs, which we look at in this particular paper for a long time. We saw that American attitudes were more prone to short term shifts, while Canadian attitudes were much more consistent over time so in Canada you have relatively straight levels of beliefs and in the United States you kind of see this up and down, but there's a general difference again, but but much more volatile in the in the in the case of the United States. And, but the striking feature, looking at the comparative angle is it wasn't uncommon to find the same percentage of Canadians believing in global warming over time. While the average in the US fluctuated, but sorry what really comes out is the enduring difference between Canadian and American beliefs with respect to climate change. With each poll we'd see substantively larger proportions of Canadians believing in climate change science, relative to Americans, but looking at the data we found that the average Canadian held views much more in line with the average Democrat. So the real outliers here were Republicans, but at the aggregate level, we would find that a substantial 20 percentage points difference was not uncommon. In Canada, you'd have maybe 80% or 85% of the population that believes climate change is happening, and that would be you know about 20 percentage points lower in the United States and that was kind of a consistent feature over time. On the flip side, if we look at climate change denial or skepticism, we similarly found large differences. As you might expect, Americans, particularly Republicans were much more likely to outright deny that the average temperature on Earth is warming. Nearly half of Republicans held this view at the beginning of the decade, not so long ago. Today, Republicans views have shifted quite a bit in an interesting way, with fewer denying the existence of climate change, and more of them viewing climate change as something that's real, but a natural phenomenon. So Republicans in the United States are less in denial about the existence of a warming planet than they are of human activity as the primary cause. And this is an important shift, I would argue, in the politics of climate change in the United States. We try and flesh that out a little bit, at least in the paper, and happy to discuss that in the Q&A. In Canada, we have a similar dynamic, but with important nuances. As in the United States, we also find that right-leaning voters are more likely to deny the existence of climate change, as well as its anthropogenic origins. But in Canada, contrary to what we saw in the United States or what we see in the United States, conservative attitudes have changed very little. No less than a third of right-leaning voters in Canada deny the existence of climate change, while one in five believe it's a natural phenomenon, and this has remained consistent over the entire decade. The last example I'll speak to before handing things over is the carbon tax. Now, the carbon tax is interesting for a number of reasons. First, because it represents a major policy difference between Canada and the United States. As you probably already know, Canada has had a federal carbon tax policy in place since 2019, while it's been very, very difficult to institute carbon taxes in the United States. Second, another reason why the carbon tax example is so interesting, it's also an area in which public opinion arguably plays a greater role in explaining this difference between Canada and the United States. Now, I'm not going to argue that public opinion is the primary determining factor, but I would argue that public opinion is a major constraint on policy in general and on a carbon tax policy in particular. And especially because as policies are more salient, public opinion becomes more salient, and this is the case of the carbon tax. So we can point to several examples in the United States where public opinion has played a determining role in dealing carbon tax proposals such as a few in Washington State, whereas in Canada public opinion was played a pretty important role in the durability of the federal carbon tax by allowing the Trudeau Liberals to continue governing the country following two elections. Two thirds of the Canadian electorate voted for a political party that supports a carbon tax. So the dynamics are pretty interesting there. But before handing things over to Chris, I maybe want to shift to the implications of some of the some of the patterns I've sketched out. One of Canada's two largest political parties, the Conservative Party of Canada needs to appeal to mainstream voters if it wants to win an election. The problem is that the vast majority of mainstream voters in Canada are on side with basic climate change science. They see climate change as a problem. They believe temperatures are warming. They want governments to come up with credible solutions. And as climate change becomes more salient, as it has in the past few elections in Canada, this has hurt the Conservative Party or any party that denies climate change for that matter or has a hard time proposing credible solutions. So the question for Conservative parties across the country becomes, how do they appeal to mainstream voters while not alienating their base? And that's something I think is a crucial question for Conservative parties in this country moving forward. With that, I'll hand things over to Chris. Great. Thank you so much, Eric, and I'll join you in thanking Josh and Barry and everybody that's involved with the project. It really was an amazing opportunity for us. As Eric mentioned, we've been at this now for a decade, and it really was a great time to kind of take stock, if you will, about what we've done over that decade and these broad takeaways on comparative U.S. And Canadian beliefs, acceptance, policy preferences, saliency on the issue. So I was very happy to have the opportunity to be engaged with the project. And as Eric said, over the decade, we've seen some shifts in attitudes and acceptance, largely both Canadians and Americans compared to a decade ago are more accepting of the problem, more reporting that they're experiencing the problem, more acknowledging the nature of the issue and its impact. The changes in the U.S., as Eric noted over this last decade, when we started this, Barry and I actually started a U.S. version of this a few years before we aligned with Eric. And we had seen some major shifts over a three-year period where there was a 20% drop in acceptance and climate change in the U.S. By the time we were starting this project with Eric, and in some ways, I think the divide that we saw at that point was the high water point in division and beliefs between Canadians and Americans. And so that's narrowed a little bit, but as Eric noted, a number of those things remain consistent in terms of the differences with Canadians, largely being more acceptance. So you might look and think, okay, have we entered a new stage as we took this on in 2020 with acceptance in both countries being higher belief in the problem, experiencing the problem, which a lot of our surveys have shown. And of course, the juxtaposition of beliefs and acceptance with marginal progress, not inconsequential, but marginal progress and things like mitigation, it starts to raise the questions of divergence between opinion and policy. Does opinion lead? Does it matter? Does it shift the efforts in these two countries? And it's a big question. And one of the things, there's a couple of factors that I think our paper and other research calls attention to on the policy front. And that's the underlying acceptance of anthropogenic factors. As Eric noted, we have a large majority. In fact, in our latest poll, three-quarters of Americans say they're solid evidence of climate change. A significant group within that cohort says that it's either completely a natural cycle or that it's a combination. Those groups are strikingly different with those that believe it's anthropogenic added sources. If you think it's a natural cycle, which a significant portion does. Your policy preferences, your concern levels, the issue saliency are very different than those. And those divides, I think, are worthy of consistent focus in this study and others. And one of the major factors, I believe, and Eric has shared in perhaps why we don't see more movement in terms of the policy front. The other part of the puzzle is Eric noted issue saliency and saliency has increased, but relative saliency of climate in both of our studies, the US and the Canadian version, remain lags behind other issues. And when people ask me why isn't policy and an opinion aligning more on this issue. I'll go to saliency time and time again. As the lead in that we tested in the 2020 elections in Canada, or the US and Canada the last federal elections how this issue plays. And certainly significant portions of the electorate identified in both countries, the issue as important and salient but relative to other issues we tested again it lagged. This mirrors lots of other studies that we've seen, you know, the US Pew has done a number of these placing climate in a, in a laggard position, if you will, and I think that still remains one of the driving factors in in why we might not see more convergence with policy preferences and actual policy in both countries. Yeah, the last thing I'll say is, you know, we're kind of at this interesting point, and Eric and I are kind of our next stage of where we're leaving this is to look at, at, at, and maybe where the public turns, as we can, we continue to struggle in both countries to achieve really consequential mitigation that might align with the science on this issue just to really slow the growth of climate change to a manageable level. Where does the public turn. Do they turn to a greater focus on adaptation. Do they turn to the possibility of geo engineered approaches to dealing with the, with the problem and our last few iterations of our of our project. We're starting to explore those, those possibilities and we're a public that accepts the issue is concerned about the issue is met with, with policy struggles I think you know the moment we're in in the US right now. And I think that's something in terms of climate policy in the Biden agenda is another example of perhaps the, the public's beliefs and acceptance on the issue, you know, meeting with a policy situation that doesn't doesn't deliver so plenty of more to come will we hope to share with you and it's going to be in Montreal is Eric noted before we're in at APSA in this fall and we'll hopefully have some updated versions of this but we were really excited to be able to put a lot of this into into form and share in this project so so thanks so much. Okay, thank you both for that presentation. And just before I turn it over to Sarah I will mention for the audience that if you have questions. What you can do is put them in the chat, and then I will choose. I'll try to get to as many questions as I can I've got some of my own as well that I'll do. First, but then we'll try to quickly get to audience questions and I'll try to do my best to get as many read and and to the presenters as possible. But before we do that, let's turn it over to Sarah to get some comments on her paper on on urban climate governance. Great. Thank you very much. And thank you to Josh and Barry for me as well for the invitation to participate in this effort it really has been a fantastic experience. I was realizing it's, it's been a little over a year or two I think so. It's just been great and I'll say thank you as well to Heather and Brendan for their comments on the first version of this paper to which were very helpful. So the paper is about urban climate mitigation policy and governance, looking at the city level and the sort of background for the paper is based on research I've been doing related to urban climate governance, broadly but also specifically fieldwork I had done in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, that was the basis for a book project. And this paper then was a really nice opportunity opportunity to think more explicitly about how specifically the authority and jurisdiction of city governments in a comparative context, shapes the successes that cities can or do or should have in meeting their greenhouse gas emissions goals so this has been an ongoing interest of mine is so what does it look like to actually implement some of the goals we have for cities. And so it was a nice opportunity to think really explicitly about that comparative institutional piece. So let me say a little bit about why we should care about cities and climate change or sort of position cities within this conversation a little bit. There's a couple of reasons I often use to motivate this and one is that cities are responsible for a big chunk of our global fossil fuel emissions so they're a key source of emissions, nearly 75% of global fossil fuel emissions globally come from cities, and a lot of this is driven by emissions from large wealthy cities like the ones we have. Well many of the ones that we have in the US and Canada so, especially North American US and Canadian cities have large carbon footprints relative to other parts of the world. And so in a way then it means we're not to a certain extent, you know, addressing these emissions and the kind of urban origins of these emissions are as necessary to meet our broader goals for climate change. The second motivation then to is that you know Chris was asking where does the public turn one place they turn is to their local governments to see if they might have some better success there and they often do. And as a result, cities and North American cities again in particular have been something of policy leaders at the global and regional levels in terms of you know setting greenhouse gas emissions targets, making plans, making plans to reduce greenhouse gas greenhouse gas emissions in that way. And US and Canadian cities in particular have been the real leaders since the 90s even in adopting you know Kyoto targets adopting Paris targets and things like this so there is policy leadership happening. And at this point. Well so I should say so that leadership has has played out in a couple of ways I mean on one hand we have a whole host of individual city plans hundreds if not thousands of cities that have plans in place to reduce their emissions. And it's also led to this formation of different types of city coalitions and transnational networks of cities and things like this. And another system there, some of their policy leadership has also come from that collective voice as well. And a third piece I'll highlight is that a lot of cities now at this point to are working to incorporate and emphasize social justice in their climate planning with many cities, including the three that I'm focusing on in the paper, re branding their climate planning and under the Green New Deal type language and and framing. So, at this point there's a sort of entry point for this then is we have these plans cities are important. There's, there are, there's a lot of policy activity happening. But you know what do these plans I'll add up to in a way, we have, like I said hundreds if not thousands of individual commitments and targets and cities have in place but what does it mean to really implement these, and have, have, you know, real meaningful reductions and emissions as a result. And in a lot of ways, there's a lot of different pieces of evidence that point to an implementation gap in cities so I won't go through all the details of that but that, that's, that's a part of the narrative is that we have these plans they're beautiful. The graphic design is getting really sophisticated, but that there's the most common result when you start to really unpack some of it is the implementation has been slow implementation lag behind where we like it. And so that's, that's, that's a big question in the larger book project as well. But what I highlight in this paper then is that one of the key reasons I think that implementation is so challenging for cities is because of the complex sets of complex and overlapping sets of jurisdiction that that are in place surrounding the sources of greenhouse gas emissions and so cities are not operating local governments aren't operating with a complete jurisdiction over their emissions sources. And that creates some unique obstacles and governance challenges to then moving from, you know, having a plan to reduce your emissions 80 by 2050 to actually seeing, seeing those those those goals realize achieving those kinds of deep reductions and emissions really requires a whole of city approach right deep transformations to urban infrastructures and economies, especially for also talking about incorporating social justice aims. And so state provincial federal governments these these all play a role in determining what cities, what local governments can and cannot do what their incentivize to do where there's funding available other types of incentives. And it also shapes the broader political economic environment that they're operating within, and that their potential partners are operating within as well. So the implementation story for cities then is not so straightforward. And I think it also raises questions about how we should be evaluating and what's the word I'm searching for grading if you will, you know, the successes that city governments are have are having. So, thinking really specifically then in the paper about what role cities do play in the US and Canada. The way I kind of unpack this is to look specifically within the three largest sectors that cities are working within when they're looking to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and that energy production energy use and transportation systems. So those three sectors are where most urban greenhouse gas emissions come from, and where cities are typically looking to act in order to meet their greenhouse gas production goals. So before I outline some examples of how the role the cities play, city governments play in those three sectors can vary can be highly variable, both within and between the US and Canada so there's no sort of clear answer to what role city governments play in the energy in energy production in the US, and there's no clearance or to what role they play in energy production in Canada. And so it's just it's really a mix, but when it comes to actually understanding you know the implementation and governance process that's that we have to be unpacking so I give some examples of, you know, the energy utilities, provincially driven energy generation schemes privatization or municipalization efforts in the US. I also talk about the variation in terms of how cities can govern energy demand through things like municipal building codes where in some cases particularly in the US cities can play a large role it can set really aggressive and climate oriented building codes that can make a big difference for energy demand. That's not often the case in Canada they have to find other ways to incentivize energy efficiency retrofits besides the building codes. And then in terms of the transportation sector one of the big pieces or one of the big changes cities would often like to see is expanding public transportation opportunities getting people out of cars and this kind of thing. But here to jurisdiction gets particularly complicated in both countries, in part because of the need for large capital investments for a lot of these big projects you know if it's a new a new light rail line new subways even bus rapid transit a lot of these take a lot of upfront costs to put in place so even if the city has a lot of control over their transit system that's different than having the capital necessary to you know make a big change. So, making sense of all this are kind of taking some some key points away from from the comparison then I try to highlight a few things. And one is like Brendan was hinting at in the intro is that transportation going to be a one size fits all either within or between the country's different policy strategies will work differently in different contexts. And I think that what I really try to emphasize is that there should be more emphasis on learning about governance strategies partnership building leveraging resources. To get the movement of how to get the machinery of urban governance moving toward a project, rather than you know how to write the perfect municipal building code because that might not be relevant everywhere. For that reason I think to this collaboration is going to be really critical of the at the urban scale. This point I'll highlight to is also going back to some of what Brenda was saying is that while cities are playing a leadership role in some ways on climate policy and taking some steps to try to, you know, move things forward. State Provincial National Governments are going to be really key, I think in a lot of places. That's the lever we're kind of waiting for to help scale things up to help, you know, kind of take things to the next level in a lot of places and so the role of cities will vary in different sectors and from place to place but we know that supportive state national policies are consistently found to really underpin effective urban climate mitigation efforts so that kind of that sort of vertical collaboration I guess as well is going to be quite important. Thank you very much. Thank you. So yeah, as you can see lots of great, lots of great content here that we can dig into I guess what I'll do is I will ask one question of my own to each of the of the presenters and then we'll sort of turn it over to see if there are any questions from the audience. The first question is for for Eric and Christopher. And Sarah actually mentioned the the Green New Deal. And I guess I'm just wondering if this has signaled in the US, particularly amongst maybe Democrats and the Democratic Party a move away from market based instruments to instruments that you know have a greater role for government or greater government involvement as opposed to market based instruments. And so I guess I'm interested in your sense of whether the support for carbon tax we've always thought of it as you know the sort of concern you know the movement of conservatives to become more and more accepting over time, and that kind of you know people on the left side were already there. So we might see a degradation or a reduction in the support for carbon tax or did you come across any evidence of this from people that are now thinking we need to do what some would consider more or would, you know have a larger involvement for government in terms of the policy instrument selection. I think that's a great question Chris did you want to go I have things to say but if you wanted to go first give the US perspective or go ahead you could lead Eric. Well, I mean, I think your questions and particularly, I think points to like the Green New Deal discussions were much more prominent in the United States in Canada was the green. Well, it was framed in French. The green recovery, I guess from COVID. So I think one of the things COVID did and it's done a lot of the pandemic has had a lot of implications, political ramifications is I think it's shifted the baseline in terms of, you know, I think the public appetite for more government policy has changed right or the public acceptability of government role has increased it's always been larger in Canada that's something we've actually been able to track and some of our surveys going back in the earlier years. We looked at, you know, who's, who's responsibility should climate change be federal government, provincial government, municipal governments, and in Canada, it's like all of the above and way higher than whatever you're going to find in the United States so there's always been a larger appetite in Canada for for government intervention but I do think that the carbon tax is is especially with the increases. It increased in April, the cost of living concerns are very much on the rise in Canada I can, there's some recent polling I've done that really shows that. And I think market based instruments to the extent that they, they work through putting a price through the price signal towards consumers and working on the demand side. They're going to be facing, maybe a bit stiffer opposition than they, they've always been controversial. They raise very important distributional justice questions. In terms of you know who they affect more and whatnot and so I think that you're absolutely right to pose that question I think it's, it's really interesting to see, you know, we're going back to discussions we've actually had a few years ago when we were when market based instruments were still up for debate it's as if in the last few years it's taken as a given, but initially they were much more controversial, and we looked at the relative popularity I guess you could call it of market based instruments government regulations and government regulations tended to be more popular, until you put a price tag on them of course, but nevertheless government regulations I've always been more popular that and I think this increased appetite for, or this increased acceptance of government playing a role in addressing these broad collective action problems and these broad crises could open the door for more, more government type regulations and less market based instruments but curious to see what Chris has to say. Yeah, it was great response. Eric and Brendan I love the question and you know I'm, as you could tell by all the gray in my beard I've been around for a long time, and it's interesting to see the kind of the evolution of these market based policies in terms of public acceptance right you know back when they emerge they were often hailed as more conservative avenues to dealing with with problems right by putting prices on on on aspects of you know externalities through cap and trade or carbon taxes or other other means like that. And we've really seen we picked this up, you know a lot of our polling work right at the end of 2008 2009 when those issues were being put into the policy attempts in the US and through degree you know in Canada, and the reframing of those as as as these government policies through things like in that cap and trade with cap and tax right and. And so we really have seen a persistent and strong divide ideological partisan divide on market based instruments that were once held this conservative options right to do this they've always remained unpopular. I haven't on Eric maybe could add on this we haven't seen a gigantic shift in that we have seen kind of, you know rise and fall of, you know, support among individuals ideologically for various, various options. The conservatives, I think Eric is right, we've actually seen support as some of those more regulatory means comparative to some of the market based options. And I guess as you start putting you know regulatory means on there and, and those types of policies to to increase energy efficiency so it is a fascinating kind of development that's been permeated our work over the last, you know 15 years. That's a really, really interesting I think obviously measuring public opinion and how it shifts around the instruments is really fascinating and how it connects to the, you know, to actual saliency and awareness of climate change is really interesting. So, Eric and Christopher both kind of touched on the idea of inflation and whether that's going to have an impact on on carbon pricing. So, and I actually was thinking about in the, this in the context of Sarah's paper as well so my question for Sarah is, you know your paper talked about coalition building and framing as being, you know really important, and I found that to be like really interesting and valuable and what I was thinking was given the importance of inflation concerns do you see this as something that could really increase support for things like energy efficiency programs, and then how would we structure those programs and communicate them to address those concerns and try to, as opposed to being a roadblock, an opportunity to say look, you know, we can do more efficiency and you know in buildings and in other other things as well but based on, you know, people's like Eric mentioned people's real concern about inflation, particularly in Canada I'm not sure about the debate in the US but I assume it's important that there as well. Yeah, that's a great question and I think that I think that when when energy efficient the sort of successful energy efficiency programs I've seen thinking about Toronto in particular actually. They're typically framed as money saving programs rather than, you know, a climate program or this kind of thing. Like, I always this is one of my favorite examples but I mean in Toronto Rob Ford signed an energy efficiency rebate as a kind of, you know, get government off the gravy train kind of kind of program. So I think that yeah it's a good point I think that will help that combat kind of narrative or you know help just be more motivation toward that idea that energy efficiency helps, you know, kind of ease the pain. You know, the burden off and that kind of thing. I wonder, I'm just speculating. I still also hear things. We just had this sustainability ambassadors training in Ann Arbor that I was part of, and you still people, you still hear people concerned about the upfront costs. And so I still wonder about that you know the getting the upfront costs to buy the new water heater or the, you know, the window replacements. I think people, I still get the sense people want government to play a role in that you know you want us to do XYZ, you know help help me make it happen kind of thing. Maybe maybe this helps me in the middle a little bit more, you know, or it, you know, helps at the margins kind of thing, at least. Right yeah that example of of of Doug Ford really stood out to me in your paper to as well right as not something that you would expect to see but you do have, you know, conservative politicians in Canada at least going around the country trying to make just inflation to try tie inflation to Justin Trudeau and the liberal government they're trying to make that happen so you know I think that really politicians seem to and Eric maybe confirm this is that that's a big. It's a big issue on people's minds right now and hopefully it doesn't become a detraction to climate action as opposed to hopefully it becomes an opportunity. Sure. Yeah, right. Let's move to some of the audience questions the first one I have is for David Bernstein and I so I guess I didn't ask if you could put maybe who this is for as well I think I can probably tell who it's for, or if it's for both people that would help as well you know I'll open it up obviously for anybody to any of the presenters to comment on it so the first one from David Bernstein is, is there a partisan divide in CO2 emissions per capita in the US or elsewhere. I think I'll jump in and if I get it right you know obviously, if you look at at states, you know it's kind of the unit of analysis and you know I'm sure we could do this with with urban areas is to right you see some some some some significant differences right across states in the US and I'm Eric you could jump in on the on the provincial aspect of this. You know, if you measured on a per capita basis, I think the answer is yes right we see considerable differences across it's not a perfect kind of linear relationship between, you know states and per capita emissions but certainly I think there's a there's a relationship Eric is that is that true for Canada. I mean, so we've never it's an interesting angle I think we never really explicitly looked at in that way but I mean there's there's clearly some relationship between the greenhouse gas intensity of the province somebody lives in and the average level of belief in climate science for instance and so you know it's not true for all of Alberta and it's important to make those distinctions right there are differences within provinces. So Canada at the aggregate level places like Alberta, which have a high per capita emissions and Saskatchewan as well are very different in terms of public attitudes towards climate change then somewhere like Quebec which has the lowest per capita emissions in the country. If I'm reading the question correctly, then yes there's there's that kind of a correlation. We also in a recent paper. We have colleagues in UBC and at University of California California Santa Barbara. This was raised by one of the reviewers in the paper and so we were looking at the extent to which conservative versus liberals loosely like small liberals small C conservatives in Canada. They're exposed to the carbon tax like their cost exposure and to what extent might that be a reason why they oppose carbon taxes, and we actually found no difference in the cost exposure between between the two. But that's at the individual level not at the aggregate level. One thing I'm at this isn't, I know it's wasn't for me but I feel like there's a pretty good evidence that emissions are tied to income and I wonder if kind of what, what drives what, because there's also maybe income and in partisan relationships but that's that's been some of the strongest patterns I've seen in terms of explaining the spatial variation of emissions. So that's interesting I'm out here in Alberta. And yeah, it's interesting we get people that will make the argument that of course we don't, you know consume all of the emissions per capita so there's a difference between like personal emissions and then just the per capita dividing, you know the number of people by the emissions, but that I'm not I'm not trying to let Alberta off the hook in any, any respect at all. So let's I have another question here. This one is to Sarah said great this is from purity and it said to Sarah great paper there I'm just wondering if clients climate science contestation is also influence influencing the urgency of climate change mitigation action in cities. It's a great question. And so what I've seen is that I think there is some evidence that the partisan affiliation such that they exist of local government leaders do does have an influence on the types of policies and the ambitions that the city has related to climate change. But I think that I don't think we typically see the same kind of of animosity and partisan kind of driven debate around climate change at the local level and I think it's because a lot of the time. We're talking about an energy efficiency program or a new subway line or solar power and this kind of thing. And I think I don't, I don't imagine that it doesn't come into play at all. But I think it does look different at the at the local level for that reason so even some of the climate ambition cities have them might call the plan itself a sustainability plan or a resilience plan or a community of the future plan or something like this. So I think it just I think it does play out a little bit different in terms differently in terms of the actual, you know, kind of public debate and the public conversation but like I said there is some dimension where some element of the, the ideology of elected decision makers that, that has also been showed to play a role too. I will say there, the other, the other place I think to look for this or to think about it or very bringing this up last year to is when the sort of city versus state kind of dynamic to so I think that that's where another place where partisan differences on climate change can play out and affect what the city does but but still kind of in a different way in an intergovernmental dynamic. Thanks for that. Okay, so the next question I'm going to read because I actually had this as one of my questions as well. This is from Pam Jordan and she says, Chris and Eric, do you have recent Canada US public opinion data for specific regions, such as the Great Lakes and the Northeast and I was interested in this as well. Yes, the answer is yes, we do. We, you know, we, we code our data or responses by a number of geographic indicators, including state and zip codes or postal codes, depending on where, where you live and so you're able to access those segmentations across and we've done a lot of that over the years you know sometimes we're, we're limited by sample size. For particular region so if we wanted to look just for example at Great Lakes states or zip codes of people within a certain distance from the lakes. You might have, have modest samples to play with, but one of the cool things you can do is pool them over time for some, some longitudinal questions that we ask and so we've done that in a number of projects I think Eric, obviously you've done this and with the Canadian data in certain things you want to say anything about that. Yeah. So, we, we downscaled the Canadian data and you can look that up on www.umontreal.ca backslash clima, not climate but clima in French so climate without the E. But also there was that was there was that Great Lakes project Chris that you worked on with Chris Gore as well that kind of rang a bell I don't know if that might be relevant for for Pam. Pam, you could reach out to me and then some folks are very Deborah is here folks that worked on that that project we did some polling, particularly on the on the Great Lakes region about the US and in Canada, and it might be if you haven't seen it. We can make sure that you get your hands on that one last thing to kind of dovetail with what Eric said we've over the years the NSEE, we've stored our data and made it available through IPCSR at the University of Michigan. I think a couple of waves waves behind catching up with getting it all clean but there's lots of it there and you could break it out. I think we don't have zip codes on that because of some confidentiality concerns, but you definitely have my state. Yeah, thanks for that. So yeah I'll do maybe one more audience question and then I'll kind of also if any questions have jumped out at the presenters. If from the chat if you look in there there's anything that I didn't get to that you want to answer we could. I also, you know, speak to that as well but I think there's one from Ben level here that I think is interesting and this is actually for both for all three of the speakers so the question is does public opinion matter for urban climate action. And so the context here is that as well there's found that in the US county level proportion of population that believe climate change is a threat is associated strongly with corporate facility level GHG reductions. And so belief is also strongly associated with the adoption of climate action planning at the city level, and they have a strong direct effect on GHG reductions and so I guess this would be for everybody in terms of the statistics but then also Sarah with your research and looking at the big cities, whether that played a role as well. Yeah, no I think just like Ben said that we public opinion or all kinds of different measures right believe in climate change, partisan leanings. Those those kinds of measures of public opinion definitely have been consistently found to be associated with the likelihood of a city adopting a climate plan. This kind of thing I think it gets back to kind of what we're saying before that I think in some ways local governments are an outlet for people's desires to see action take action on climate change. And it's also, in a lot of ways, a level that makes sense right there's things that cities can legitimately do, and that they need to do in order to meet some of these goals to so that's definitely the case. I think that it's interesting to think about sort of where where and how it matters you know beyond, let's say predicting, you know adopting a plan or, or some of these emissions reductions, sort of where where it fits in and I think about some of the implementation challenges a lot of times it is kind of mobilizing resources, and you know, getting the money flowing, getting a line item in the city's budget, you know getting the staff in place and that kind of thing. I think that is an area where public opinion would really help a city as well I remember, I can't remember if this is in there or not but again an example from Toronto. There's a moment when the city was considering cutting its its climate program and people I remember people showed up at City Hall and stayed until like three in the morning you know people really rallied. And, and I don't imagine that was the only deciding factor but the city did end up keeping it you know so I think it's not it certainly matters. I think that, like in most policy, other things matter too, we know especially when it comes to getting, you know, a big chunk of money from the state or getting the ads and meds on board or this kind of thing but I think it does play a big role. Eric or Christopher did you want to add that from your sort of your perspective of your data. I think we're a bit short on time I think it's a fascinating question I do think that public opinion matters for urban climate action. But I really think it raises some fascinating question the reasons why raise some fascinating questions about the quality of representation and a representative democracy and the reasons why municipalities the reasons why it ought to matter more for I think raise some really interesting questions of representation so I think it's a great question. Yeah, I'll just add I think it's a fascinating space that Sarah is working in right here with with looking at this, and obviously from the public opinion perspective. What's what's one frame to think about right a lot of urban municipal governments they don't have the same benefit as national governments the same for states of deficit spending. You know they can do through bonds and other things but there's constraints right. So as we kind of move into the space right now where they're feeling more the effects of climate change especially coastal cities lots of other areas. And they have to address, you know, the problem through this, you know the frame of options adaptation mitigation right those types of things. I'm fascinated to see where public opinion goes right, you know, you could of course, you know, through an ideological lens want to, to take on a local level, more mitigation policies, but, but is this adaptation become prioritized right in in local urban governance right now, because it's one thing you can control and you have a limited budget without those options for deficit spending to kind of do it so there's just really cool place to Sarah's occupying right now. Good stuff. Yeah, totally agree that's really interesting and yeah I mean the connection last question really does connect both papers right and shows how they can speak to each other in some ways even though they're focused on, you know different methodology and everything so. So, I want to thank our presenters for their sharing their expertise and their work with us today and stimulating a really great conversation I want to thank everybody for attending and making this a great session and for your questions. I didn't necessarily get a chance to get to them all but thank you for putting them out there, and you know I read them all they look very interesting. And yes, also thank you to Josh and Barry and their team for organizing all of this, because it's been really interesting and really valuable work and I'm interested to see where it goes in the future so yeah. Josh is there anything else. I just wanted to thank you Brendan, as I did in the chat because not only did he do a great job moderating but he's also been part of this project as a reviewer and also of course my thanks to Barry for whom without whom I would not be here either. I'm happy to be part of it so thanks everybody and have a good day.