Yesterday, in response to my article on ‘Taking the Global Warming Paradox With a Grain of Salt‘, Mary, one of the readers of this blog suggested that I take a look at a 2007 joint survey on global warming, from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute. While discouraging, the results have the benefit of sounding more realistic than other studies, and of providing clear insights into the kind of communication and policy strategies most likely to succeed.
To the question, “Compared to other problems facing our country, tell me if that issue is one of the most important?”, here is where global warming came out:
- War in Iraq 57%
- Rising cost of health care 51%
- Education 51%
- Terrorism 50%
- Covering people who don’t have health insurance 44%
- Moral values 44%
- Social security and Medicare 44%
- American dependence on foreign oil 37%
- Illegal immigration 34%
- Cost of gasoline and electricity 33%
- Job creation and economic growth 31%
- Federal budget deficit 31%
- Quality of the environment 30%
- Crime and violence 30%
- Global warming 28%
- Taxes 25%
To be contrasted with the fact that 70% agree that there is solid evidence of global warming, that it is a big problem, and that government should take immediate action. However they are only willing to support governmental action that does not create any discomfort whatsoever their lives, particularly in regards to their pocket book:
Policies that would gather highest support:
- Making clean energy sources cost less 68%
- Funding massive federal research and development to develop cleantech 56%
- Requiring American industries to reduce their carbon emissions 51%
Policies that would gather lowest support:
- Auctioning off the right to emit carbon pay for the right to pollute 9%
- Abolishing payroll tax and replacing it with a tax on carbon emissions 11%
- Establishing a carbon tax on electricity, gasoline and other products 13%
- Making energy sources that pollute – gasoline, home heating oil, coal – cost more 18%
- Requiring American consumers to reduce their carbon emissions 37%
- Making businesses that emit pay for the right to pollute 38%
More findings from the Nathan Cummings research:
The poll also divided the sample to observe the effects of various psychological primes on global warming public opinion, including using specific consequences of global warming expressed by the environmental community such as the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Telling voters about these consequences did not increase their desire to take action on global warming . . . scaring people is not the way to get them to act.
Finally, the poll tested public support for a variety of global warming policy prescriptions. Voters expressed initial support for a variety of potential government actions, with support for an Apollo-type investment strategy scoring highest. However, when told of the potential costs of those programs, support dropped precipitously, with only the Apollo-type investment proposal retaining support from a majority of voters.
The investment-centered New Apollo program received more support than either Cap-and-Trade or Sky Trust proposals. Additionally, when voters were told of the negative consequences of each program (cost of energy for Cap-and-Trade and Sky Trust; tax and deficit implications of Apollo type investments), Apollo was the only program to maintain majority support of the electorate (54%). Support for a Cap-and-Trade program fell from 62% to 46% when voters were told of the potential impact on energy prices.
Global warming proposals that can be framed as increasing the cost of gasoline and electricity will likely trigger tremendous backlash from an anxious electorate. The key to passing substantive limits on carbon emissions is to couple those limits with specific policies to make clean energy cheaper.
This research leads to some rather chilling conclusions:
People know about global warming and what it means in terms of global consequences. Still they do not consider it as a personal or policy priority. They see it as a problem to be dealt with by government, and only in policies that will not result in them having to make any personal sacrifices, particularly of a financial nature. They seem to think that the problem will take care of itself, in the form of technology, and smart, no pain – all gain, energy policies.
I look at these conclusions, and I ponder other world’s grim facts such as India’s Tata Nano future, China’s threat of ‘no longer just one child policy‘, and China’s support of always more coal plants. And I get depressed, and very, very concerned about the future of our species. Mostly, I am mad at my fellow Americans for being so short-sighted. Don’t they realize that the world is looking up to them to lead the way. How can we keep going with our oil and gas orgy, and expect other countries to show self-restraint. As mean as that may seem, I do hope for a recession, and peak oil to slap my fellow Americans at the gas tank and in their wallets. If not by morality and reason, maybe they will be led by necessity?
La Marguerite 
Oh, please, Marguerite don’t hope for a recession and higher prices as a means of getting Americans to face up to global warming.
First off, not only will that not work, but even a crisis at the pump won’t work. I am old enough to remember gasoline rationing in the 70s. My mother, who was a nurse, would wake me up before dawn and bundle me in the car in my pajamas so she could wait on line to get gas so she could make it to her shift. It was horrible.
And I remember my early trips to Europe in the 80s…being struck by how much more Europeans paid for gas and how much more they seemed to conserve.
The best bet is to hope that Toyota and other like-minded companies continue to produce a wider variety of fuel-efficient cars. I liked what Obama said to Detroit. (Thanks for that clip).
Hi LaM!
Great post, as usual. reading you loud and clear.
IDEA:
You know that Hollywood sign on the hillside in that photo? I have a good idea, been thinking about it for a year or so. …….Someone who is good at photoshopping, ……should erase the word “Hollywood” from the sign there……. and replace it with the words “GLOBAL WARMING” as a kind of iconic warning sign for the world. ……Do you know anyone who could do this and post it somewhere on the Web, maybe right here ? I for one will be happy to see it done and i think the the photoshpped sign will become a powerful tool to wake more people up to the needs of fighting this climate crisis we are in, in both big ways and small ways, can you photoshpp this or ask someone.
— Danny Bloom
As I said in a comment on a post about Cuba, even Cuba’s “peak oil experience” was just a 20% drop in supply – though 2/3 their oil goes to electricity generation, so it couldn’t be taken from there, and was taken from the 1/3 that went to transport, so they lost about 2/3 their transport fuel.
This caused a 20% drop in their emissions.
US emissions are 7,300 million tonnes CO2e of the world’s 37,000, or 20%. A 20% drop in 20% of the world’s emissions would be 4%. World emissions are increasing at more than 3% annually – mostly from Asia and former Communist bloc countries.
So even a drop in oil supplies larger than the US has ever experienced, one which was strong enough to knock a third off the Cuban economy and make everyone lose about twenty pounds as they went hungry sometimes, and one which created the urban gardens movement everyone admires, that would only cause a drop in world emissions which would be made up in a bit over a year by the rest of the world.
It seems like wishing a lot of pain on Americans just for that miserable result, buying the world another year. I’m sure you can come up with better solutions than that.
Imagine this hypothetical scenario:
You (the reader) and your young child would like to go swimming. After all, it’s hot today. But, the only body of water around, a small pond, is of uncertain depth. Because of the surrounding land, it looks like it could easily be only a foot deep, or perhaps it’s ten feet deep? Who knows? The water is not transparent, so you can’t tell. There is a large rock next to the pond, and it turns out that the only way you can try out the water is to dive in, head-first, from the top of the rock, which is about eight feet high. So, your choice is this: Do you (and your young child) dive off the rock, into the pond, head-first, without knowing the pond’s depth? Or, do you decide not to go swimming? Most people advise you not to dive off the rock. They don’t know precisely, but they are reasonably confident that the pond is shallow.
What would you do? What would you advise your young child to do?
Now, unless I have been unclear in my description of this scenario, most people in their right minds, and most parents in their right minds, would not dive off a rock into a small pond of uncertain depth. Period. It’s called common sense. Furthermore, we wouldn’t have to analyze the matter very long.
Now, most relevant scientists (i.e., people who ought to have the best understanding of the matter) are telling us, much more loudly than scientists normally care to talk, that we are slowly but surely heating up the Earth’s atmosphere. Their reasoning is very good, based on the information at hand. They know the thermal properties of carbon dioxide. They know that hydrocarbons (coal, oil, etc.) contain gobs of carbon (that’s why we call them hydrocarbons!) and produce gobs of carbon dioxide when burned (it’s a very basic chemical equation). They know the Earth’s atmosphere is very thin. And so forth.
In order to believe that people in the general public, even if they knew the facts of the matter and if they were more (validly) educated on the matter, would nevertheless not care about it, or would not think it’s important, or would prefer a hotter world to a fifty-cent gasoline tax, you’d basically have to believe that people, on average, are stupid and have lost all common sense.
So, something’s wrong (speaking generally here, about this issue, not about the details and limits of any particular piece of research): Either most scientists are wrong; OR average people are dumb; OR average people are not getting exposed to the facts, the concepts involved, and the key considerations.
Although, it must be admitted, most people are not quite as smart as Albert Einstein, nevertheless, I think the main problem is in the information, conceptual understanding, and dialogue we are (or aren’t!) exposed to. In other words, a key aspect of the problem involves the MEDIA.
And think about it: So far, as far as I know, nobody has even knocked on the front door of the (new) NY Times skyscraper in NY City and said, “Hey guys, don’t you think you should maybe change your conventional journalistic approach on this one? After all, although I’m sorry to bother you about this, if the human race is really overheating the planet and killing off thousands of species, might that warrant a different approach? Just saying.” Yes, we sometimes critique the Times via its sustainability blog, but do the Times execs even read our complaints? It doesn’t seem so.
Finally, there is another topic that might make for a good “wake up” blog post some time. The essence of it can be seen this way: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and so forth took action, even military action, for several reasons having to do with self-government, “taxation without representation”, and the like. Martin Luther King Jr. took action, in the streets, out of a warranted sense of injustice. And so forth. My point is this: If a large number of people grow increasingly convinced, based on solid evidence, that our “status quo” is dangerously warming the entire planet, then whether or not that large group of people is a complete majority, or whether or not it’s politically effective, that group of people is very unlikely to just sit around calmly and watch for very long as we (the others) overheat the planet. Historically, people have gone to the streets, and even taken up arms, for (very important but) less gargantuan reasons than Earth’s climate and inhabitability. So, there is a rather basic flaw in the assumption (that many people seem to make) that the “status quo” can remain the “status quo” forever, if the majority of scientists are correct. Put another way, if half the people still favor “status quo” even when it’s clear (to others) that the climate is changing, and if the other half of the people realize that we are messing up the planet, my bet is that we’ll have a mess on our hands and the “status quo” will indeed change, but (unfortunately) in ways that are unnecessarily bumpy. (Talk about “inconvenient truths”! That’s a big one.) That is what history and human nature tell us. And that’s one reason why it’s so important for the media to “get real”, sooner rather than later.
Anyhow, sorry for the lengthy post. Now, time to write another critique to the Times.
Cheers.
Ok, no recession or peak oil for the Americans . . . if we can help it! 🙂 I just don’t think people, even some of the very enlightened ones – and I know quite a few – are getting it. These people continue to fly, and drive long distances, and build big houses far away from public transportation, while making a point of carrying reusable bags at the grocery store.
Driving on the freeway, at rush hour, as I did the other day, and seeing the endless lines of cars all releasing CO2 in perfect unison was absolutely horrifying to me. Many of the cars with Sierra Club, and Save our Planet stickers . . . We are in California after all! And I was in one of those cars.
If not peak oil or recession, then I go to the need for a leader to inspire sweeping policy changes, even bitter ones, and a leader who will oversee a massive overhaul of our whole transportation/energy/housing infrastructure.
Great post Marguerite.
I agree that we need new leadership with a big, and healthy, vision. Hopefully today goes well.
Also, if you have lots of enlightened and/or intelligent friends, invite them over and host a big event, with some perks, e.g., chips and dip, and good wine, and etc. Have a few diverse folks come to talk briefly. Show a couple short films. Play genuine movement music. And so forth. If you bring a group of reasonably intelligent people together, you (and a few others) can present and discuss a few things that might well engage and move them. Have a “Make A Difference” party. If you like, I’d bring my basketball to show people what 0.3 mm looks like, or I’ll bring my jar of oil muck from the San Francisco cleanup. If intelligent people in Silicon Valley, and near Stanford, can’t be influenced by some of these messages and illustrations and genuine props, who can be?
Or, now that the (short-term) weather is getting nice, do it at a beach or park.
Anyhow, that’s it for now. Cheers.
marguerite, your comment here really reveals what it’s all about. It’s culture. We wealthy Westerners are accustomed to thinking of “culture” as native people dancing and singing songs about the old country, or something. But culture really is everything, including day-to-day life.
Consider the lifestyle of, say, someone living kosher and shomer shabbat. There are rituals for everything – meat and milk are kept separate, even to having separate dishes, candles are lit on Friday evening and pockets emptied and people walk to synagogue, there’s a certain way to dress, men rise for prayers before dawn, and so on. There are many daily rituals and ways of doing everyday things.
Wearing a head covering is a good example – the laws say that a man cannot walk more than three paces without it, but ask a devout Jewish man to remove it while seated, and he’ll look at you askance, and if he does it, feel uncomfortable. He’s just accustomed to wearing it all day every day.
Just because a person has not made a conscious choice to live in a certain way, and there is no particular god or language associated with that lifestyle, does not make it any less rigid. I cannot enter a synagogue without my head being covered, and I cannot enter a board meeting without a tie.
People are accustomed to a certain way of living, they have many daily rituals which are all the harder to set aside since we claim they’re not rituals, and if they set them all aside they feel uncomfortable.
Challenging the dominant culture is very difficult, especially because as with the rituals, we claim not to have one. But wearing a tie and turning on the tv when we get home from work are every bit as ritualistic as wearing a yarmulke and reciting the Shema Yisrael, in that they’re things we do more or less without thinking about, and which if we stopped doing them we’d feel uncomfortable, out of place, something wrong.
Cultural change is in general very slow.
This is a great insight Kyle. You are absolutely right. Some things that come to mind when thinking of American culture: car, fast food, convenience, gadgets, appliances, malls, consumption, cowboys, competence, domestication of nature, power, individualism, volunteerism, philanthropy, church, excess, Hollywood, technology, . . .
It’s an insight I stole from that “The Story of Stuff.”
The US wasn’t always like that, people made it so by deliberate policy and choices after WWII. It took 10-20 years of concerted effort, and maybe the youth revolution of the 1960s was in part a response to that.
So perhaps 10-20 years of concerted effort at creating a new culture, or at least undermining the old one, could do the trick?
I dunno.
SOS
The Story of Stuff was a fabulous find. Thanks to whoever discovered it. Does the author/actress/hostess of SOS live around here? She might be a great speaker for a “make a difference” event of some sort, whether at someone’s house, or at the beach, or at a park, or in Stanford Stadium.
(This from someone who used to market a lot of “stuff”)
Anyhow, thanks to the Story of Stuff folks.
[…] entitled culture to a planet conscious society? Back to yesterday’s discussion on ‘A Most Inconvenient Truth‘, and Kyle’s point about the cultural dimension of climate […]
Mary Hunt is the one who turned me on to The Story of Stuff. So she deserves all the credit!