Beyond abstraction: moving the public on climate action

The “Cautious” at 19 per cent, the “Disengaged” at 12 per cent, and the “Doubtful” at 11 per cent, are by steps increasingly less trustful of scientists, environmentalists, and the mainstream media, more reliant on information from friends or family, and more likely to believe the television weatherman, acquaintances, and religious figures when it comes to climate change. Only 7 per cent, “the Dismissive”, flatly disbelieve in human-induced climate change and actively work against global warming measures. This group reads newspapers at half the national average and gets its news from commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

The breakdown suggests that getting action on climate change will require more than dire stories in the media. Some groups will be more receptive to the same message delivered by Pat Robertson - or the corner barber - than from Al Gore. Some groups will be willing listeners, while others will need the message to be hammered home again and again.

Leiserowitz says the sizeable percentage of those who believe in climate change, whether they have acted or not, should encourage environmentalists. “I don’t think most policy makers realise how much consensus there is” on global warming, he says. “It’s latent, sitting there, waiting to be mobilised.”

More worrisome is the politicisation of the issue. In another large-scale study on public attitudes, Barry Rabe - a political scientist and professor of environmental policy at University of Michigan who worked with the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia - found that 83 per cent of Democrats believe global warming is happening, while only 53 per cent of Republicans do so.

“That really did surprise us,” Rabe said. “No matter how you asked the questions, there wasn’t much diversity by state, age, income, gender. The one that jumped out time after time was partisan affiliation.”

Rabe, like Leiserowitz, believes that support for action on climate change is greater than many politicians believe and that politicians have been needlessly timid about calling on the public to make sacrifices to slow global warming. For example, rather than make a case to Americans for tough action - including a modest carbon tax - Congress seems intent on watering down carbon cap-and-trade legislation to make it “politically palatable”, he says. And despite a desperate need in many states for revenue, “they won’t use the ‘T’ word” and raise gasoline taxes that would generate funds and cut driving, Rabe notes.

“Most of what has been enacted is really not asking much in the way of behavioural changes, or would cost (people) much,” he says. While many state leaders have moved more aggressively, national leaders have been “timid, in the sense of not really pushing Americans to confront the complexity of all of this and the possible transitions that may have to be made.”

For example, he asks, “At what point can we speak with more transparency about the whole question of energy transformation? For any political leader who really wants to take the lead on the issue, there is tremendous reluctance to be very specific about price ramifications.”

Some of Barack Obama’s top appointees, such as Energy Secretary Steven Chu and economic advisor Lawrence Summers, have written about the need for carbon pricing, but have not pushed it aggressively in Washington, Rabe notes. Even good ideas such as basing car insurance or state vehicle registration fees on miles driven gets few advocates willing to espouse a sensible - yet unpopular - idea.

Anthony Patt, who studies decision-making and environmental policy at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, believes our language has not been specific enough. Too much information is indistinct and vague about solutions, he says. He has worked to change environmental policies in developing countries where there are too few information sources. But the same lessons apply to developed countries with an information overload, he says.

“The information is not in a form that people quite trust, or understand, or maybe they see contradictory information,” he says. In Africa, for example, farmers need to know what irrigation practices would help conserve water. In Europe, however, the problem is “an inability to find the right information. It was confusing for people to decide if it’s even worth their time to worry about global warming.”

Patt contends that changes in behaviour come when people are given information about exactly what they can do to fix the problem. He suggests, for example, creating the energy equivalent of the agricultural extension service, which could advise consumers and businesses on practical ways to save energy, just as the agriculture service advises farmers on the best way to grow crops. Putting a price on the carbon consequences of our choices also makes those decisions much clearer, he says.