Very nice analysis of attitudes towards climate change. Of course, even if reducing GHG is not a priority for most (37%), an organized political group can force policies through. The 10% saying no action should be done on climate change seems to fit in well with those who say it isn't happening.
Thank you Bobby for the kind words and the comment!
I tend to agree with you that “an organized political group can force policies through.” To me the question becomes “Should they?” Many supporters of quick decarbonization will answer an emphatic “Yes!” and point out to risks of inaction. I’m not a political scientist, but I think it’s fair to say there are social and political risks whenever policies are “forced through.”
About the 10% — to your point, my intuition is there’s a large overlap between this group and people who say climate change is not happening. I would also mention that Substack contains a small number of well articulated writers who say both climate change is happening and nothing should be done to reduce emissions.
Your point on the overlap makes me wonder what drives the view that climate change is happening but nothing should be done. Some might say it is simply too late. Others might say efforts are too costly and adaptation would be a better approach. A third option is to point out that unless China and India reduce emissions, efforts in the US don't make a difference. The reactions I see to these do nothing reasons are 1) Reduction is a moral imperative regardless of outcome. "At least something is being done." It would be immoral not to try. 2) Once we have reduced sufficiently, China and India can be induced to reduce emissions through moral suasion. 3) Once we have reduced sufficiently, China and India can be induced to reduce emissions through political and economic coercion. Undoubtedly I'm missing a lot here.
> To me the question becomes “Should they?” Many supporters of quick decarbonization will answer an emphatic “Yes!” and point out to risks of inaction. I’m not a political scientist, but I think it’s fair to say there are social and political risks whenever policies are “forced through.”
Exactly. A voice at the table and individual accountability. Forcing policies while suppressing the citizens voices is tyranny.
Well, its likelier more the sense that "what can i do about it? not much!" and "changes in my own lifestyle would not change this problem". Which is a shitty logic but thats what murricunts think yep. Maybe most people are like that everywhere?
You raise a good point: How do we interpret people's answers? If someone says that addressing climate change is not a priority, could that be because they would actually like it to be addressed but don't want to change their lifestyles or are pessimistic about the impact of policies? We should be careful when interpreting results of a survey. (This reminds me of the "Lizardman's constant": https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/.)
>But reducing emissions is not a priority for them
I'll be waiting to read your thoughts about these surveys.
This is complex. If someone knows something is risky, but they still do it, what do we do?
Here's an interesting analogy: cars. Driving a car puts many people at risk of a car accident but people still hop in their cars. I'll make an assumption about why: there's an expectation by people that car makers and government will make cars safer to drive (airbags, crumple zones, blind spot monitors, etc.). Assuming I've captured what's going on with cars, note that what a person can directly control with their driving behavior (like speeding, driving while drunk, texting while driving) isn't factored in. In other words, people driving cars punt the responsibility of reducing risks onto others instead of themselves. :) Pass the buck, please. When these two approaches are combined, we arrive at shared responsibility. Part individual and part communal. Our country has recognized a shared responsibility about the risks of driving cars.
Rather than a shared responsibility, these surveys about climate are leaning towards government responsibility. Personally, I've held onto the ideal of accountability. And the empowerment of the individual. If I expect someone else to do a thing, would I myself do it? Lately, I've noticed folks have shut down individual empowerment and accountability for our climate. When I've pushed for individual action on climate change, I've been told only communal action matters. Sure, climate is global at scale but ... wow! I did not expect individuality to be so quickly squashed in this age of social justice. The grassroots approach that started successful environmental movements, like Greenpeace and organic farming, have been replaced by top-down tyranny. Climate being globalized now implies that the individual is powerless to stop it. No surprise that these surveys find Americans now expect government to fix climate. And I believe this top-down approach is intentional. It's making individuals feel powerless and intentionally suppresses the citizen's voice. So any dissent that would be voiced about government policies gets suppressed. That is Un-American.
P.S. Evidently my opinion about individual vs communal action is at odds with most folks who commented on this article. I will say this in my defense: individual action based on what's in peer-reviewed literature can still yield the communal action goals. The two aren't mutually exclusive. For example: when every American drops 1 airplane flight from their plans this year, then that single, feeble individual action compounds into the reduction in transport GHGs that is called for as communal action. The important difference is whether the individual has had a voice in that decision, or the power of our government has been used to de-value our individual voices and oppress our actions.
> Evidently my opinion about individual vs communal action is at odds with most folks who commented on this article.
JP, this is what makes your comments so valuable to me. I’m a big believer in cognitive diversity as described by Surowiecki and Page almost 20 years ago. A diverse range of well articulated viewpoints allow me to escape binary thinking and “force” me to reflect on aspects I would not have considered.
As a specific example, you have commented elsewhere on this blog that our cultural background and the language we use to describe climate change have a huge impact on how we perceive it. After I published this article, I re-read the title and subtitle and realized that by writing “but” I was implicitly assuming a contradiction or an opposition between the two facts. A more neutral conjunction would have been “and.” In other words, I am still subject to the same binary thinking that climate change either is a hoax or requires urgent action.
In a massive 2014 UN survey of development priorities in people across world nations, in the poorest nations, those without reliable electricity, climate change ranked dead last. The Chinese, Africans and Indians aren’t going to delay building a reliable electrical grid because of fear of climate change.
And as your nice summary of US attitudes shows, in the more energy secure nations, if your climate change mitigation plan is to lower CO2 production by increasing energy poverty it will fail.
Andrew, thank you for pointing out the 50% who both believe climate change is real and man-made. I must admit that’s one of the weakest part of my analysis and I tried a bit to sweep it under the carpet! 🤣
I have trouble interpreting that number not only because of the differences in surveys but also because it’s not clear to me how respondents understand the question and what they mean. I wish pollsters had asked people to explain their statement and provided the raw answers so we could do some qualitative analysis.
Asking “is the planet warming” is straightforward because we’re talking about a single concept. Asking “is climate change mostly due to humans” might be more confusing. Let me give you an example.
I personally think that the planet has warmed by 1.3C compared to 1850 and will warm by about an extra 1.5C before 2100. I think this has increased the number of heatwaves. I also think that the number and intensity of hurricanes in the world has _not_ increased in the past 120 years. Suppose that just before talking to a pollster I read a news article saying that climate change has made hurricanes more frequent and stronger. How would I answer the pollster?
I could, out of frustration with the media, answer “No.” That will show them always exaggerating!
I could, when comparing the number of extreme events impacted by climate change (1 — heat waves) to the number of extreme events not impacted by climate change (1 — hurricanes), think “well 50% of extreme events are impacted by climate change”, and answer “equally caused by humans and nature”, assuming I have that option. (What if I don’t have that option though?)
Or I could think “global warming is man made and impacts some aspects of the climate” and answer “Yes.”
Nah, I think you're hitting on something very important: poll numbers should always be taken with a healthy dose of salt.
That said, I don't think the 50% number is all that far off. There's such a profound level of ignorance here, where it's possible to go from cradle to grave in a single echo chamber like never before.
Yea, the +-50% agreement also appears in peer-reviewed literature. Not that peer reviews get rid of all problems in public polling.
I must be a glass-half-full kinda guy :) because I take these polls as a good thing. After much effort, decades of communication on climate has informed people and formed a majority. It might be a slim majority but it's a means to move forward nonetheless.
Whatever our political opinions, the US has budgeted more funding in the past 2 years than ever on projects that, if used as promised, would reduce the country's GHG emissions. I doubt Congress would swallow these budgetary bills if they thought it would kill their next elections. I'm sure Congress watches polls like hawks and there's enough popular opinion in favor to keep them in office.
Whatever our political opinions, it would be amazing if both parties (not just one) would operate as though this is an important, urgent matter.
For what it's worth: I see plenty of reason to be optimistic as well! I do take negative things away from reports like this since I want progress to happen faster (and hey, we might really need it to happen a LOT faster), but I also see the progress we're making, and it's notable and worth calling attention to.
Thank you for a very interesting and helpful summary and breakdown of those surveys.
Those findings support the position that the responsibility for dealing with climate change cannot be unloaded onto individuals, clearly politicians owe us to deal with it, globally.
Contrary to cleaning up the environment, climate change is a global problem, and cannot be dealt with locally.
The one and only priority must be to reduce global carbon emissions, rather than blind local actionism like, for instance, increase sales of EVs, or reduce meat consumption.
Agreed. If the goal of climate policies is to limit temperature increases by reducing GHG emissions, it is logical to focus on the areas that give us the most “bang for our buck”, regardless of where the policy is implemented and what are the technologies involved. However, by and large that’s not how we’ve been going about it.
Exactly. What else could’ve we try to achieve, apart from reducing GHG emissions? Even if we succeed, we do not know what the effects will. That linear relationship between GHG emissions and temperature is mostly wishful thinking, but worth pursuing, given there are not that many options.
Very nice analysis of attitudes towards climate change. Of course, even if reducing GHG is not a priority for most (37%), an organized political group can force policies through. The 10% saying no action should be done on climate change seems to fit in well with those who say it isn't happening.
Thank you Bobby for the kind words and the comment!
I tend to agree with you that “an organized political group can force policies through.” To me the question becomes “Should they?” Many supporters of quick decarbonization will answer an emphatic “Yes!” and point out to risks of inaction. I’m not a political scientist, but I think it’s fair to say there are social and political risks whenever policies are “forced through.”
About the 10% — to your point, my intuition is there’s a large overlap between this group and people who say climate change is not happening. I would also mention that Substack contains a small number of well articulated writers who say both climate change is happening and nothing should be done to reduce emissions.
Your point on the overlap makes me wonder what drives the view that climate change is happening but nothing should be done. Some might say it is simply too late. Others might say efforts are too costly and adaptation would be a better approach. A third option is to point out that unless China and India reduce emissions, efforts in the US don't make a difference. The reactions I see to these do nothing reasons are 1) Reduction is a moral imperative regardless of outcome. "At least something is being done." It would be immoral not to try. 2) Once we have reduced sufficiently, China and India can be induced to reduce emissions through moral suasion. 3) Once we have reduced sufficiently, China and India can be induced to reduce emissions through political and economic coercion. Undoubtedly I'm missing a lot here.
This is a great question. I’m partly writing this blog to understand what others are thinking and also to make my own mind.
If you want to read a well articulated example of the overlap, have a look at this post from Michael Woudenberg: https://open.substack.com/pub/polymathicbeing/p/the-climate-is-changing.
> To me the question becomes “Should they?” Many supporters of quick decarbonization will answer an emphatic “Yes!” and point out to risks of inaction. I’m not a political scientist, but I think it’s fair to say there are social and political risks whenever policies are “forced through.”
Exactly. A voice at the table and individual accountability. Forcing policies while suppressing the citizens voices is tyranny.
Climate change is a problem, but humanity also has much bigger problems to worry about. https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/climate-change
Well, its likelier more the sense that "what can i do about it? not much!" and "changes in my own lifestyle would not change this problem". Which is a shitty logic but thats what murricunts think yep. Maybe most people are like that everywhere?
You raise a good point: How do we interpret people's answers? If someone says that addressing climate change is not a priority, could that be because they would actually like it to be addressed but don't want to change their lifestyles or are pessimistic about the impact of policies? We should be careful when interpreting results of a survey. (This reminds me of the "Lizardman's constant": https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/.)
Yesssssss, I do hith and ssssspeak like thithhhh, why do you athkh?
You have brilliantly outlined the perspectives with data!! absolutely loved reading your post!!
I really appreciate the comment! This is the post I’m the happiest with so far -- I feel I did a decent job fairly summarizing all available data.
Your subtitle -- oof!
>But reducing emissions is not a priority for them
I'll be waiting to read your thoughts about these surveys.
This is complex. If someone knows something is risky, but they still do it, what do we do?
Here's an interesting analogy: cars. Driving a car puts many people at risk of a car accident but people still hop in their cars. I'll make an assumption about why: there's an expectation by people that car makers and government will make cars safer to drive (airbags, crumple zones, blind spot monitors, etc.). Assuming I've captured what's going on with cars, note that what a person can directly control with their driving behavior (like speeding, driving while drunk, texting while driving) isn't factored in. In other words, people driving cars punt the responsibility of reducing risks onto others instead of themselves. :) Pass the buck, please. When these two approaches are combined, we arrive at shared responsibility. Part individual and part communal. Our country has recognized a shared responsibility about the risks of driving cars.
Rather than a shared responsibility, these surveys about climate are leaning towards government responsibility. Personally, I've held onto the ideal of accountability. And the empowerment of the individual. If I expect someone else to do a thing, would I myself do it? Lately, I've noticed folks have shut down individual empowerment and accountability for our climate. When I've pushed for individual action on climate change, I've been told only communal action matters. Sure, climate is global at scale but ... wow! I did not expect individuality to be so quickly squashed in this age of social justice. The grassroots approach that started successful environmental movements, like Greenpeace and organic farming, have been replaced by top-down tyranny. Climate being globalized now implies that the individual is powerless to stop it. No surprise that these surveys find Americans now expect government to fix climate. And I believe this top-down approach is intentional. It's making individuals feel powerless and intentionally suppresses the citizen's voice. So any dissent that would be voiced about government policies gets suppressed. That is Un-American.
P.S. Evidently my opinion about individual vs communal action is at odds with most folks who commented on this article. I will say this in my defense: individual action based on what's in peer-reviewed literature can still yield the communal action goals. The two aren't mutually exclusive. For example: when every American drops 1 airplane flight from their plans this year, then that single, feeble individual action compounds into the reduction in transport GHGs that is called for as communal action. The important difference is whether the individual has had a voice in that decision, or the power of our government has been used to de-value our individual voices and oppress our actions.
> Evidently my opinion about individual vs communal action is at odds with most folks who commented on this article.
JP, this is what makes your comments so valuable to me. I’m a big believer in cognitive diversity as described by Surowiecki and Page almost 20 years ago. A diverse range of well articulated viewpoints allow me to escape binary thinking and “force” me to reflect on aspects I would not have considered.
As a specific example, you have commented elsewhere on this blog that our cultural background and the language we use to describe climate change have a huge impact on how we perceive it. After I published this article, I re-read the title and subtitle and realized that by writing “but” I was implicitly assuming a contradiction or an opposition between the two facts. A more neutral conjunction would have been “and.” In other words, I am still subject to the same binary thinking that climate change either is a hoax or requires urgent action.
Clear and concise and informative.
Should be required reading !
Thank you!
In a massive 2014 UN survey of development priorities in people across world nations, in the poorest nations, those without reliable electricity, climate change ranked dead last. The Chinese, Africans and Indians aren’t going to delay building a reliable electrical grid because of fear of climate change.
And as your nice summary of US attitudes shows, in the more energy secure nations, if your climate change mitigation plan is to lower CO2 production by increasing energy poverty it will fail.
Thank you for pointing out the UN survey. Interesting!
It's very frustrating that only around half of Americans think we're causing this. It's bonkers, but that's Murka!
Andrew, thank you for pointing out the 50% who both believe climate change is real and man-made. I must admit that’s one of the weakest part of my analysis and I tried a bit to sweep it under the carpet! 🤣
I have trouble interpreting that number not only because of the differences in surveys but also because it’s not clear to me how respondents understand the question and what they mean. I wish pollsters had asked people to explain their statement and provided the raw answers so we could do some qualitative analysis.
Asking “is the planet warming” is straightforward because we’re talking about a single concept. Asking “is climate change mostly due to humans” might be more confusing. Let me give you an example.
I personally think that the planet has warmed by 1.3C compared to 1850 and will warm by about an extra 1.5C before 2100. I think this has increased the number of heatwaves. I also think that the number and intensity of hurricanes in the world has _not_ increased in the past 120 years. Suppose that just before talking to a pollster I read a news article saying that climate change has made hurricanes more frequent and stronger. How would I answer the pollster?
I could, out of frustration with the media, answer “No.” That will show them always exaggerating!
I could, when comparing the number of extreme events impacted by climate change (1 — heat waves) to the number of extreme events not impacted by climate change (1 — hurricanes), think “well 50% of extreme events are impacted by climate change”, and answer “equally caused by humans and nature”, assuming I have that option. (What if I don’t have that option though?)
Or I could think “global warming is man made and impacts some aspects of the climate” and answer “Yes.”
Maybe I’m over complicating things?
Nah, I think you're hitting on something very important: poll numbers should always be taken with a healthy dose of salt.
That said, I don't think the 50% number is all that far off. There's such a profound level of ignorance here, where it's possible to go from cradle to grave in a single echo chamber like never before.
Yea, the +-50% agreement also appears in peer-reviewed literature. Not that peer reviews get rid of all problems in public polling.
I must be a glass-half-full kinda guy :) because I take these polls as a good thing. After much effort, decades of communication on climate has informed people and formed a majority. It might be a slim majority but it's a means to move forward nonetheless.
Whatever our political opinions, the US has budgeted more funding in the past 2 years than ever on projects that, if used as promised, would reduce the country's GHG emissions. I doubt Congress would swallow these budgetary bills if they thought it would kill their next elections. I'm sure Congress watches polls like hawks and there's enough popular opinion in favor to keep them in office.
Whatever our political opinions, it would be amazing if both parties (not just one) would operate as though this is an important, urgent matter.
For what it's worth: I see plenty of reason to be optimistic as well! I do take negative things away from reports like this since I want progress to happen faster (and hey, we might really need it to happen a LOT faster), but I also see the progress we're making, and it's notable and worth calling attention to.
At the same time, we still have a long way to go.
Thank you for a very interesting and helpful summary and breakdown of those surveys.
Those findings support the position that the responsibility for dealing with climate change cannot be unloaded onto individuals, clearly politicians owe us to deal with it, globally.
Contrary to cleaning up the environment, climate change is a global problem, and cannot be dealt with locally.
The one and only priority must be to reduce global carbon emissions, rather than blind local actionism like, for instance, increase sales of EVs, or reduce meat consumption.
Agreed. If the goal of climate policies is to limit temperature increases by reducing GHG emissions, it is logical to focus on the areas that give us the most “bang for our buck”, regardless of where the policy is implemented and what are the technologies involved. However, by and large that’s not how we’ve been going about it.
Exactly. What else could’ve we try to achieve, apart from reducing GHG emissions? Even if we succeed, we do not know what the effects will. That linear relationship between GHG emissions and temperature is mostly wishful thinking, but worth pursuing, given there are not that many options.