First, the good news: A vast majority of Americans–as many 90%, depending on how you phrase the question–think the U.S. should act to curb global warming. Most expect the benefits of a national response to outweigh the costs.
Now, the bad news: Very few have acted on those beliefs. Only about 10 to 12% have contacted government officials, given money or volunteered with an organization working to reduce global warming.
So we’re concerned, but apathetic.
Those are among the findings of an exceptionally detailed public opinion study called Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis. The 132-page study breaks down the populace into six groups, which it calls Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive, and analyzes each of their views. It was conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, which is led by Ed Maibach.
Global Warming's Six Americas
Disclosure: Ed is a good friend and running buddy. He’s also a prominent expert on social marketing, a professor of communications at George Mason U. (PhD., MPH, with prior experience at Porter-Novelli and the National Cancer Institute) and very thoughtful on the topic of how to talk about climate change. When we sat down recently, I began by asking him which of the study’s findings had surprised him.
“I found nothing more surprising than the fact that of the group of people most concerned about climate change—the group we call alarmed—75 percent say they have rewarded and punished companies based on their environmental performance, but most hadn’t taken the time to write or call their congressman,” Ed said.
“They are more comfortable expressing their wishes through they shopping patterns than they are by acting as citizens in a democracy,” he added.
It’s no wonder many companies that care a lot about their brands—I’m thinking here of Starbucks, Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney and others—want to be seen as caring about climate change, along with most of their consumers. Their customers are paying attention.
Americans tend to see themselves as consumers, not citizens, Ed explained. “Therefore it’s not surprising that this is how many of us choose to express our wishes for a better world,” he said.
Unfortunately, politicians haven’t heard the message of public concern, which is why so much horse-trading and compromise was evidently required to get the not-strong-enough Waxman-Markey climate change bill through the House. That’s also the reason why the bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. Advocates worry that the climate bill is vulnerable to the distortions and cable-news soundbites that have brought more heat than light to the current health care debate.
One problem unearthed by the Center for Climate Change Communication interviews is that Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade approach is among the least popular energy and climate policies. Among all groups, there was more support for funding research into renewable energy sources (92%), requiring automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles (79%), providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy-efficient cars or solar panels (85%), expanding offshore oil drilling (75%) and requiring utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from wind, solar or other renewable sources (72%).
Majorities also favored government subsidies for more efficient air conditioners and water heaters (72%), building more nuclear power plants (61%) , even signing an international treaty requiring the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 90% by 2050 (61%).
By contrast, only 53% supported cap-and-trade, which was described like this:
Create a new national market that allows companies to buy and sell the right to emit the greenhouse gases said to cause global warming. The federal government would set a national cap on emissions. Each company would then purchase the right to emit a portion of this total amount. If a company then emitted more than its portion, it would have to buy more emission rights from other companies or pay large fines.
No wonder it’s a tough sell. Worse, only 33% of those interviewed supported a 25-cent increase in the gasoline tax, even with revenues returned to taxpayers in the form of lower federal income taxes–a simple and effective way to encourage both less driving and more fuel-efficient cars.
So how should we talk about climate change? Maybe by talking about energy instead, Ed suggests. Government actions aimed at saving energy—which have the added benefit of making our economy more efficient—enjoy strong support.
Ed Maibach
“Dick Cheney was distinctly out of step when he said that conservation is a personal virtue,” Ed says. Efficiency a surprisingly popular public policy. “The actions that will really make a difference—reducing our energy use—there isn’t much controversy about that.” No wonder the cash for clunkers program was such a hit.
“The economy and energy have more salience and presence than the environment or global warming or the phrase climate change—which is very abstract,” Ed says. “It doesn’t mean much to people and it has no emotional resonance.”
Language matters. So Ed suggests that those who care about the climate change get away from descriptors like “greenhouse gas emissions” or “GHGs” or “CO2” and instead go with “heat-trapping pollutants,” a phrase that White House science adviser John Holdren has used.
“It’s concrete, it’s easy to understand and it’s accurate,” he says.
You can listen to a podcast of my conversation with Ed at The Energy Collective, a energy policy website. I’m a member of TEC’s Blogger Board.
I didn’t get past the first paragraph, because it is nonsense. Look at all the polls. Few people give a damn.
It is depressing, if it is true, that ordinary (but concerned) citizens are choosing to vote with their wallets rather than calling their political representatives.
Could the blame for this lie partly in the widely-held but deluded belief that we can make an individual difference to climate change, such as by unplugging our cell phone charger or buying a Prius? It is these green myths, widely peddled by those romantics who promote green lifestyles, that depoliticizes a problem which can only be fixed by politicians.
Peter T. Knight
Context America
“So Ed suggests that those who care about the climate change get away from descriptors like “greenhouse gas emissions” or “GHGs” or “CO2” and instead go with “heat-trapping pollutants,” a phrase that White House science adviser John Holdren has used.”
How about just “pollutants”? Wouldn’t that work?
The minute you start adding qualifiers you dilute the message and start the eyes-glazing-over phenomenon.
Better add another couple of “america’s” to the list. Ticked Off, and Really Ticked Off. Mr. Gunthter, I suggest you take a leave of absence from your job, get a real job (manual labor) with some regular guys (better shave off that silly beard first), and live where they live on what they have to live on for at least a year. Hang out with them for a while. Ask them what they think about the high class academics who believe in global warming. Tell them just how much of their hard earned money would vaporize in Carbon Credits (and better yet, tell them where their money is going!). Watch out for bad and unpredictable reactions!! Mr. Gunther, the populace will not simply follow you and your ilke like sheep. You take away their money like this and they will react. BTW, I don’t “believe” in global warming. There is no global warming. I spend my working time in the open air. It has been colder the past couple of years. Oh YES, it has! Greenies “believe” in global warming–they have to believe, since there are no relevant facts to back up the belief, only their feelings. All is not lost Mr. Gunther. Everyone wants cleaner air, water, land. I want a car that runs at least one hundred miles to the gallon. Work that angle, you will get farther along. I don’t want my hard earned money taken from me in the form of Carbon Credit extortions for Al Gore’s hoax. No, I don’t. No I won’t.
[...] policies such as the Carbon Tax in France or the Waxman-Markey bill in the US. As Marc Gunther’s interview of Ed Maibach from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University reminds [...]
Despite tireless efforts to inform the public and mobilize them (either through scare tactics or through inciting outrage), one of the problems in current climate change communication is the need to balance between holding industry and government accountable and making climate change a personal issue. Not in the sense that individual actions and actors can necessarily “fix” the “problem”, but in making people feel as if climate change affects them personally and what they can do personally about the problem, as Sharon Dunwoody (U Wisconsin) has observed.
fred’s comment illustrates the frustration shared by many people who have been overwhelmed with confusing and contradictory information that makes us understand complex climate change and its effects as weather patterns and as “simple” metaphors (eg. global warming, greenhouse effect, ozone hole). While elites are overrepresented in debates about climate change (with noted overrepresentation of climate change deniers vs. scientists in an attempt to provide “fair” and “balanced” coverage, working-class citizens and “everyday” Americans are underrepresented, making them feel as if the issue is not really about them.
Adding to this is the emphasis on money that confuses and alienates many who consume newsmedia, which makes many feel as if the issue is really about which party “wins” the prize. When we talk about climate change solutions and bring up issues such as a cap-and-trade or raising fuel prices (which is peanuts in comparison to fuel taxes in Europe), people not only feel that the issue is not about them but is about their money.
I’m not saying that we should not be paying more to support sustainability, but rather we should be framing the costs as a type of value. Yes we will be paying more if climate change bills are passed that require taxation but what we really need to understand is that we have been paying far too little the entire time. And that includes everybody- “ordinary” citizens, politicians, scientists, academics: Any raise in price should simply reflect the true social, environmental, political and cultural costs of our lifestyle and consumption. It is unfortunate that the individuals in Ed Maibech’s study are concerned about climate change yet unwilling to materially support it- this will require a major paradigm shift that posits us all as accountable and responsible actors in this situation.
It may seem shocking, but quite a large number of Americans are actually against using the government to force others to do things at gunpoint.