Before 2000, there was no clear indication of where the burgeoning Latino minority population in California stood on environmental issues. While there was no question that the number of Latinos was growing rapidly, there was no indication of whether or not these new voters supported conservation and other environmental issues.
Conventional wisdom at the time suggested that unlike labor and education, the environment was simply not a high priority for Latinos. Despite a sizable number of Latino legislators being good votes on priority environmental legislation, very few were leaders on the issue and even fewer authored strong environmental bills. In fact, Latino legislators with poor environmental scores would often justify their antipathy on the grounds of environmental bills not being a priority for their largely Latino constituencies.
But that began to change after the CLCV Education Fund conducted a first-ever study on the environmental attitudes of California Latino voters, with particular emphasis on urban Latinos. At the time, we had suspected that the environment was of greater concern to this population than was suggested by conventional wisdom, but nobody was prepared for just how strongly Latino voters cared.
Our poll and subsequent report revealed that Latinos were strongly concerned about air and water quality and other environmental conditions in their communities. Not only did they label the environment a priority issue, but they called for a variety of aggressive actions to maintain environmental quality, including toughening environmental laws, bolstering enforcement, creating more parks and redeveloping unsafe areas such as brownfields.
This led to a sudden and dramatic change in the way legislators, especially Latino legislators, prioritized the environment. Soon after the reports of the study were conducted, then-Assemblymember Hilda Solis authored a landmark bill to address environmental justice and then-state Senator Martha Escutia authored an environmental priority bill to monitor toxics in children to protect public health. Both bills became law.
A decade later, the old conventional wisdom is reversed. With the Latino population continuing to grow, Latinos are largely considered strong environmental voters. A 2010 Los Angeles Times/USC poll on environmental attitudes produced results that continued to demonstrate that Latino voters are environmental voters. However, our work in this area is far from finished. With the 2010 census data showing increased Latino populations moving inland and growing in the Central Valley, CLCV Education Fund is planning a new study to better understand this segment of the Latino population. We anticipate that this new data and improved understanding of voters’ values will help us encourage better environmental leadership from Central Valley legislators — elected leaders who have largely not been reliable supporters of the environmental movement.
