Climate Cabinet Action Launches Second National Scorecard, Accountability Tool

Voters can discover how 4,296 state legislators in 27 U.S. states voted on 476 critical climate and environmental justice bills – including their own state representative

‍EXPLORE: Use our interactive web tool that shares scores by state and identifies a specific state representative’s voting history on climate

Climate Cabinet Action (CCA), a national organization helping local leaders run, win, and legislate on climate change, today released its second Climate Cabinet National Scorecard, a national tool to hold state legislators accountable for their votes on important climate legislation. The Scorecard is announced just as families come to grips with climate change’s acceleration on communities across the nation. With dangerous heat domes, record-breaking day rainfall totals, and hazardous air quality emergencies, the climate crisis has gone into overdrive, and now – not later – is the time for action. 

This Scorecard can equip voters – and journalists – with the facts and trends ahead of critical state legislative elections in 2023 and 2024. This data comes as about 75% of the national climate goals will be met through state and local action. This resource helps provide a roadmap on how this strategy could be met. 

Voters can also discover how 4,296 state legislators in 27 U.S. states voted on 476 critical climate and environmental justice bills – including their own state representatives. The states represented in the Climate Cabinet National Scorecard represent more than half the U.S. population.

“Families are seeing their lives dramatically change in real time thanks to climate change, and with the latest National Scorecard, Climate Cabinet Action has created the ultimate accountability tool showing state legislators’ voting trends on climate. It’s time voters call out politicians for putting special interests ahead of taking action on the climate crisis,” said Caroline Spears, Climate Cabinet Action Executive Director. “Whether you’re an activist, a strategist, a journalist, or just an average voter, the National Scorecard is the resource that will show which state legislator is making climate action a priority and which is not.” 

The Climate Cabinet National Scorecard is an aggregate of publicly-available analysis from partners in the climate movement – including from organizations like Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and Clean Water Action. The project is a holistic approach to scope a legislator’s or state’s commitment to climate action. For each state legislator, Climate Cabinet has assigned each legislator a Climate Score of A to F based upon their voting history on climate legislation. This score can be used to learn quickly whether an elected official is a climate champion or supports anti-climate interests. 

At a glance, the Climate Cabinet National Scorecard demonstrates the following trends:

• The partisan divide on climate votes continues to grow between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats (average score: 95.17%) are largely voting for pro-climate policies while Republicans (average score: 29.59% continue to push anti-climate legislation every chance they get. 
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• However, party affiliation alone does not signify whether an elected official is a climate champion.  According to the Scorecard, about 342 Democrats in 20 states received a score below an A – meaning they supported anti-climate policies. In contrast, 176 Republicans in 10 states were found to support policy that would fight the climate crisis. 

The Climate Cabinet National Scorecard was created to make it easy to hold elected legislators accountable for their votes and build the momentum we need to pass strong climate policy everywhere. This resource is aimed to grow capacity for targeted state engagement, and it is designed to help advocates identify trends in state climate politics across America. If an elected official wants to improve their climate score, they can do so by voting for pro-climate policies once their name is called during the next legislative session.

‍Read the full Climate Cabinet National Scorecard, with a state-by-state breakdown of all state legislator scores.