About

Leah C. Stokes is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is also affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department at UCSB. Her research focuses on energy, climate, and environmental politics, with particular attention to American politics aspects such as representation, public opinion, voting behavior, and public policy. Within environmental politics, she studies climate change, renewable energy, water, and chemicals policy. In 2022, she was recognized as an advocate on TIME100 Next and named one of Business Insider’s top 30 global leaders working toward climate solutions. Her book, Short Circuiting Policy, explores the role utilities have played in promoting climate denial and rolling back clean energy laws. This book was named the Best Energy Book of 2020 by the American Energy Society, listed as a top 5 climate book of 2020 by The New York Times, and won three awards from the American Political Science Association. Her forthcoming book, The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet, chronicles the political journey of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the largest U.S. climate investment in history, through the personal experiences of three new parents working in and around government. She also contributed to the New York Times bestselling anthology All We Can Save, a collection of essays by influential women in the climate space. Leah Stokes co-hosts the climate podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her academic research has been published in leading journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Nature Energy, Energy Policy, and Environmental Science & Technology. She has also written articles for major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, and CNN, and is frequently quoted in national media. Leah Stokes earned her PhD in Public Policy from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s Environmental Policy & Planning group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she also obtained a master's degree in Political Science. Prior to MIT, she completed a Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science & Policy at the School of International & Public Affairs and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. Before entering academia, she worked at the Parliament of Canada and Resources for the Future.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Public economics
• Economic growth
• Natural resource economics
• Environmental science
• Geography

Selected publications

• The politics of American clean energy and climate policy: Why the Inflation Reduction Act passed

  Climatic Change · 2026-03-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  When President Biden won the 2020 election and Democrats gained control of Congress, a climate policy window opened. Many voters, activists, and lawmakers wondered: after 10 years of inaction, would the United States finally pass a federal climate law? This article explains the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022, the single largest climate and clean energy investment in American history. Our research draws on participant observation, interviews, primary and secondary sources. We construct a five-year political history from 2018, identifying key points of departure from Congress’s attempt to pass the Waxman-Markey bill during the Obama administration. We argue that the IRA passed because activist outsiders used scientific target-setting and the Democratic Presidential primary to put climate on the political agenda. They built stronger coalitions with tighter coordination. Congress chose to pass the bill through budget reconciliation, allowing Democrats to sidestep the filibuster, and empowering their most conservative member. Finally, time constraints and outside pressure led key negotiators to secretly finalize the deal without opponents weighing in. We briefly describe implementation and the second Trump administration’s attempts to repeal the law. Our conclusions about activist strategy, legislative compromise, and policy durability have implications for policymakers, advocates, and social scientists working on climate politics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effect of environmental voter mobilization on voter turnout and environmental attitudes: evidence from a field experiment in British Columbia, Canada

  Climatic Change · 2025-06-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Environmental organizations play an active role in electoral politics, yet these interventions have received far less study than the movement’s efforts at public persuasion or policy advocacy. We examine the effect of environmental voter mobilization on turnout and attitudes among supporters of a Canadian environmental organization. Through a field experiment during the 2017 British Columbia election, we evaluate two prevalent types of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) conversations – a regular GOTV conversation focused on vote plan-making, and an issue GOTV conversation that first engaged respondents in a personal discussion about environmentalism. For both GOTV interventions, we estimate a positive yet borderline significant effect on turnout. Neither GOTV intervention strengthened environmental attitudes, and the regular GOTV intervention may have even decreased en-vironmental issue salience. Our research illuminates the challenges that climate advocates face in mobilizing their constituents, while demonstrating their potential for influence on the electorate.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for: Prevalence and predictors of wind energy opposition in North America

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-08-26

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is replication data and associated R code for the article "Prevalence and predictors of wind energy opposition in North America"

  PublisherDOI

• Prevalence and predictors of wind energy opposition in North America

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-09-25 · 53 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Addressing climate change requires societies to transition away from fossil fuels toward low-carbon energy, including renewables. Unfortunately, large wind projects have proven politically controversial, with groups opposing them across advanced economies. To date, there are few large-scale, systematic studies to identify the prevalence and predictors of opposition to wind energy projects. Here, we analyzed a dataset of wind energy projects across the United States and Canada between 2000 and 2016. We found that during this period, in the United States, 17% of wind projects faced significant opposition, and in Canada, 18% faced opposition, with rates in both countries growing over time. Opposition was concentrated regionally in the Northeastern United States and in Ontario, Canada. In both countries, larger projects with more turbines were more likely to be opposed. In the United States, opposition was more likely and more intense in areas with a higher proportion of White people, and a smaller proportion of Hispanic people. In Canada, opposition was more likely and more intense in wealthier communities. The most common tactics used to oppose wind energy were court cases, legislation, and physical protests. The number of people engaging in opposition to wind projects is likely small: Across articles that cited the number of individuals engaging in protests, the median number was 23 in the United States and 34 in Canada. When wealthier, Whiter communities oppose wind projects, this slows down the transition away from fossil fuel projects in poorer communities and communities of color, an environmental injustice we call "energy privilege."

  PublisherDOI

• The effect of public safety power shut-offs on climate change attitudes and behavioural intentions

  Nature Energy · 2022-07-21 · 38 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The American electric utility industry’s role in promoting climate denial, doubt, and delay

  Environmental Research Letters · 2022-09-01 · 31 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract It is now well established that fossil fuel companies contributed to undermining climate science and action. In this paper, we examine the extent to which American electric utilities and affiliated organizations’ public messaging contributed to climate denial, doubt, and delay. We examined 188 documents on climate change authored by organizations in and affiliated with the utility industry from 1968 to 2019. Before 1980, electric utilities’ messaging was generally in-line with the scientific understanding of climate change. However, from 1990 to 2000, utility organizations founded and funded front groups that promoted climate doubt and denial. After 2000, these front groups were largely shut down, and utility organizations shifted to arguing for delayed action on climate change, by highlighting the responsibility of other sectors and promoting actions other than cleaning up the electricity system. Overall, our results suggest that electric utility industry organizations have promoted messaging designed to avoid taking action on reducing pollution over multiple decades. Notably, many of the utilities most engaged in communicating climate doubt and denial in the past currently have the slowest plans to decarbonize their electricity mix.

  PublisherDOI

• American Electric Utility Climate Communications

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-02-03

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This dataset provides the full document sample (in the spreadsheet) used in the analysis for Williams et al. 2022. This dataset contains links to 188 documents authored by 26 organizations related to the American electric utility industry. Documents were published between 1964 and 2020. All documents either mention or are focused on climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: The effect of public safety power shutoffs on climate attitudes and behavioral intentions

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-05-05

  datasetOpen access

  Replication Data for: The effect of public safety power shutoffs on climate attitudes and behavioral intentions

  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: Early-career reflections: Get the balance right

  Nature Energy · 2021-02-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wildfire-mitigating power shut-offs promote household-level adaptation but not climate policy support

  Research Square · 2021-06-22 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matto Mildenberger

  44 shared

• Parrish Bergquist

  Georgetown University

  32 shared

• Noelle E. Selin

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  11 shared

• Peter D. Howe

  Utah State University

  6 shared

• Amanda Giang

  University of British Columbia

  6 shared

• Alexander Hertel‐Fernandez

  4 shared

• Samuel Trachtman

  4 shared

• Mark Lubell

  University of California, Davis

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Best Energy Book of 2020 by the American Energy Society
• Top 5 climate book from 2020 by The New York Times