How Your Politics Influence Your Household's Carbon Footprint

Hat tip to Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard for pointing us to this succinct study that proves the power of political ideology on the thermostat. Researchers at UCLA have cross-referenced energy billing data from more than 280,000 single-family home owners in California with their party registration, with this compelling result recently published in the journal Economics Letters:

The researchers, economists Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn, controlled for household demographics, climate conditions, electricity prices, and the age and size of homes to figure this out. And the effect is even more pronounced when we divide liberals into registered Democrats and Green Party members. Relative to registered Republicans, Democrats consume 5.1 percent less electricity, and Green Party members 15.5 percent less. That gap grows wider in the summer, with Democrats consuming 6.6 percent less energy than Republicans, and Green Party members 19.1 percent.