ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — Local climate activists have united to form a new voting guide that aims to educate voters and force politicians toward climate-friendly policies.

Tomas Castro is one activist who has spent his own time and money to publish the OC Climate Voter Guide, a comprehensive list of candidates covering every city in the county and every race from Congress to the school board.

Castro said his group of volunteers sent surveys out to every candidate for whom they could find contact information in all 34 Orange County cities. They received about 100 surveys back and noted which politicians did not fill out and return answers to their questions. The questions include the candidate’s stance toward climate change, community choice energy and public transit.

“We noticed there’s a real lack of information around local elections in Orange County,” he said.

Orange County is one of the most populous counties in the nation and boasts more people than 27 states. Activists want to make the county an advertisement for good climate policy and have been working toward building a coalition of willing politicians to support climate policy. This latest project is a test case for how climate activists can build grass-roots efforts, one of the more challenging and rewarding tasks in politics. Both political parties have long coveted deep-set networks of passionate volunteers ready to spring to action each election cycle.

The group of about 15 volunteers split up tasks, with each member reaching out to different candidates.

Castro, who studied at Irvine Valley College and is now a senior at the University of California Berkeley, thinks OC Climate Voter can be an ongoing institution.

 “We’re not going away and my hope is that going forward we see climate policy from our candidates as a result of us shining a light on them,” he said. “The more people who know about us, the more people who will see the guide this year, which will give us a better jumping off point in 2024.”