User:NextDonnaMoss/sandbox/Leah Stokes

Leah Cardamore Stokes is a Canadian-American political scientist and expert on environmental policy. She is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition, Stokes is a senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America, where she helped advance federal climate policy that subsequently became part of the Inflation Reduction Act. She also hosts the climate podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her research focuses on political behavior, public opinion, and the politics of energy and environmental policy in the United States. She regularly writes about energy and climate policy for news outlets and on social media.

Early life and education
Stokes earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and East Asian studies at the University of Toronto. She completed a Master of Public Administration at Columbia University. After graduating, Stokes worked at Resources for the Future. She went on to work at the Parliament of Canada. Her role involved policy analysis for Members of Parliament working on the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee, and the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. In 2010, Stokes moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned a master's degree and a doctorate under the supervision of Lawrence Susskind. At MIT, Stokes created environmental policy curriculum, including The Mercury Game, a treaty negotiation that has been used by over 100 universities around the world.

Career
In 2015, Stokes joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on energy policy and environmental policy in the United States. She has investigated the interaction between public opinion and policy making on renewable energy. She has also looked at how the design and presentation of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) changes public support for a particular policy. She has also published research on backlash against renewable energy projects. Her recent work examines Congressional staff and their understanding of public opinion.

Stokes is also a senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America, where she focuses on federal policy advocacy to address climate change and accelerate electrification. In 2021-2022, she worked on federal climate policy including advising democratic offices in Congress. Policies she worked on subsequently became part of the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly on clean electrification and home electrification. In September 2021, she gave testimony on electrification to the Joint Economic Committee in Congress.

Awards and honours
Her awards and honours include:


 * 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Siemens-MIT Energy Fellow
 * 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Martin Fellow
 * 2018 Midwest Political Science Association Patrick J. Fett Award
 * 2019 Business and Politics (journal) David P. Baron Award
 * 2019 Jack Walker Award, Best Article on Political Organizations and Parties from APSA, 2019.
 * 2019 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Scholar
 * 2020 Grist 50 Fixer
 * 2020 Harold J. Plous Award, UC Santa Barbara
 * 2020 Best Energy Book, “Short Circuiting Policy,” American Energy Society

Selected publications
Her publications include:



Stokes regularly writes for prominent news outlets, including The New York Times The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and Vox. She is regularly featured on TV, radio, and other popular media, including NPR, The Ezra Klein Show, BBC World News, ABC News, CNN and PBS Newshour.

In October 2020, Stokes and Katharine Wilkinson started the podcast A Matter of Degrees, in which they discuss the levers of power that have created the climate problem, and the tools to fix it. . In the first two seasons, the show covered a range of topical issues, such as equity in green jobs, climate and gender equality, Indigenous clean energy leadership, farmers and land regeneration in Puerto Rico, and electric utilities.