[WARNING: many readers may find the following a downer—but if you care about facts, you must be willing to look at all kinds of Inconvenient Truths.]
U.S. public on climate change: a crisis in name only
The September 20th Global Climate Strike has been inspiring—for those seriously concerned about global warming and climate change.
It’s less inspiring to read of how not-serious most of the American public is. A week before the Climate Strike, the release of a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll headlined “Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis” appeared to portend a sea change (pun partially intended) in attitudes toward climate change.
Read on for what underlies appearances.
The takeaway from the poll is that the public says, big problem—let somebody else take care of it. Consider that 38% describe climate change as “a crisis,” and another 38% describe it as “a major problem but not a crisis.” However, to combat climate change only 37% say major sacrifices will be required, 48% say minor sacrifices, 14% “not requiring much sacrifice,” with 1% having no opinion.
Next we read that “nearly half of adults say they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on electricity to help combat climate change.” If that sounds promising, the report says just 27% would pay $10 extra a month. Meaning that at best 27/38 (71%) is the fraction of those saying the threat is “a crisis” would also pay $10 extra a month. $120 a year. Hmmm . . . 33¢/day = a bit more than 1/6th the price of a “tall” cup of Starbucks coffee. Now that’s what I call a major sacrifice!
What about remedies? Majorities believe money for climate action should come from increasing taxes “on wealthy households and on companies that burn fossil fuels.” This would make sense if it could actually happen. Elizabeth Warren has other ideas for what taxes on the wealthy could be used for—education, child care, and other anti-poverty programs. These are good ideas, but if her proposals take a big piece of the tax-on-the-wealthy pie, what will be left over for climate action?
As for vehicles, “increases in the gas tax remain deeply unpopular.” A 10-cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax gets 35% support. The latter suggests that a carbon tax—perhaps the most practical tool to cut emissions—is a nonstarter for the electorate.
Technology seems to get low marks as a creator of solutions, although the data are ambiguous on this point.
All this despite 79% thinking human activity is causing climate to change (43% “very certain”).
Fossil fuel industry propaganda, stubborn demographics, and cognitive inertia: ‘wait and see’
A major CBS News poll published in The Guardian a few days after the Washington Post/Kaiser Foundation poll arrived at slightly different interpretations of public attitudes, even though the underlying data were very similar. In The Guardian, more emphasis was placed on what Anthony Leiserowitz at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications identified as “a vitally important misunderstanding.” What misunderstanding? It’s one fostered by the fossil fuel industry, since long ago they realized flat-out denial of climate change would not fly in the face of mounting evidence of climate change. Industry propaganda has managed to hoodwink almost half of the American public into believing that “there is disagreement among experts” about how much human activity contributes to climate change, leaving many open to the view that most if not all of climate change is a result of “natural cycles.”
Leiserowitz’ s research “has repeatedly found that this is a critical misunderstanding,” promoted by the fossil fuel industry for decades, in order to sow doubt, increase public uncertainty and thus keep people stuck in the status quo, in a ‘wait and see’ mode.”
The Global Climate Strike and a surge in youth activism on climate has raised hopes of a sudden shift in attitudes that may produce consequential action. This may happen in many places on this planet, but in the USA the shift is doomed to slowness largely because of demographics. We’re getting older as a nation, and older people are slower to take in and process new information, much less even pay attention to it in the first place if it smells of inconvenient truths that jeopardize a middle-class lifestyle. This is cognitive inertia, and take it from someone age 73, it becomes ever more difficult to break free—even if you think you want to change, it’s hard to picture how, in the radical way required to halt global warming.
The CBS News poll indicates that only about 58% of Americans over 65 consider climate change a serious problem or crisis. This is troubling when we consider that, as indicated above, “serious” does not mean all that much in terms of willingness to sacrifice . Those 65 and older comprise 16% of the U.S. population, and more importantly, 21% of those of voting age, and they vote in disproportionate numbers. Despite a widespread perception that the voting gap between young and old narrowed in 2018, the facts say otherwise: Martin Wattenberg reported in the Washington Post back in February that in 2018 the youth vote increased markedly, compared with recent midterm elections. But so did the turnout rate of all other age groups, at least in the three states of George, Iowa, and Delaware. The age turnout gap remained basically unchanged in those three states. Moreover, with the passage of time older people will constitute a greater fraction of the electorate, and the U.S. Census projects that by 2030, 1 in 5 Americans “will be of retirement age.”
Even if gerrymandering is disrupted, you will still have the cognitive inertia of increasingly older people resisting substantive change.
Moreover, in the U.S., you still have a stubborn cultural bias against government intrusion, not just among right-wingers but among the largest voting bloc—independents (roughly 42%). Without government intrusion, all bets are off for fighting carbon pollution significantly.
On the other hand, a chance for hope comes from an unexpected quarter. . . .
We can take heart in one felicitous development in the person of Frank Luntz, a legendary GOP “master messenger,” who seems to have gotten climate change religion as a result of his home nearly being torched by a wildfire. Kate Yoder reports in Grist that Luntz is aware that while firefighters saved his home, “others aren’t so lucky.” Yep, Frank, once you think about it, there are hundreds of millions of people throughout the world whose climate impacts definitely “aren’t so lucky”—surprise!
Propaganda wizard Luntz recommends that climate change fighters need to change their language—don’t say “create jobs” but “create careers;” don’t say “sustainability” because it rings of the status quo. Stay away from the “complicated science of climate change” and “personalize the message instead.” See the list of “USE” / “LOSE” recommendations about halfway down Yoder’s piece. (Significantly, LOSE “one world,” and USE “working together”—”one world” is, of course, toxic to conservatives as smacking of world government.)
Can bad news be good news?
Frank Luntz may be able to move the needle among those on the political right, but what may swing the needle into the Red Zone for Americans will be overwhelming devastation from severe weather in North America—in which case calamitous bad news could drive the shift toward real, swift, and consequential action. Might that happen in 2020, and voters wrest control of the Senate from Republicans? AND THEN push their representatives hard?
First, though, the meme “natural cycles” needs to be removed from the conversation as explanatory. To my knowledge, Frank Luntz doesn’t have an answer for that—a consequence of his labors for the Koch Brothers that helped plunge the climate debate into a morass of ignorance and uncertainty.
Bottom line: time is not on our side