Talk / Overview

In democratic societies, efforts to promote a shift to sustainable energy must first go through the legislative process. Campaign contributions from both pro-environment and anti-environment groups have been known to affect the way members of the United States Congress vote on clean energy-related bills. We use a random forest (RF) model to predict the environmental voting records of members of Congress from the donations they received from relevant organizations. We use campaign finance data from The Center for Responsive Politics and assess voting records with The League of Conservation Voters' National Environmental Scorecard. Our research seeks to gain insight into the impact of political contributions on the ability of Congress to pass environmental legislation of all types, particularly that directly related to confronting climate change.

Talk / Speakers

Thomas Chen

Student, Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering & Head of Outreach, Climate Data Hub

AMLD / Global partners