Today’s New York Times has an article about how educators and government agents located in rural states are trying to encourage climate-friendly activities without alienating climate deniers. They are learning to discuss climate change without using the words “climate change.” For example, they might instruct farmers on practical ways to cope with drought without ever mentioning the most important cause of recent increases in drought.
One way to encourage renewable energy is to emphasize cost savings. Pocketbook voting may explain why 45% of Republicans favor giving priority to renewable energy over fossil fuels, even though only 12% of them say climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the country.
PowerScout, a San Francisco-based solar company did a study comparing the solar installation rates of donors to the Democratic and Republican parties. Using a database of the names and addresses of campaign contributors from the top 20 solar states, they first narrowed the sample down to 1.5 million contributors living in single family homes. Then they checked these addresses using satellite images and artificial intelligence software. By feeding images of homes with and without solar panels into the computer, the model, called a convolutional neural network, learned to distinguish between them with 90% accuracy.
Here are the results by state.
Overall, 3.06% of Democratic donors had solar installations, compared to 2.24% of Republican donors. However, in California, where solar power is well-established, it was a virtual tie, and in the state with the highest penetration of solar, Hawaii, Republicans had a slight edge.
PowerScout intends to use the same computer technology for marketing purposes, to identify people who are most likely to purchase rooftop solar for their homes.
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