Too often, the climate crisis is framed as a political debate rather than a scientific consensus. This can be problematic for creating the innovative solutions the situation necessitates. However, the story is not so simple and while we may assume it cuts readily on party lines in the US, when we take a closer look, we find a more nuanced situation. This week's lesson is an exploration of the ever-evolving public opinion of climate change, with particular focus here in the US. We're digging into this because it is fundamentally one of the most complicated human dimensions of climate change and also perhaps one of the most potentially powerful to get us out of the mess. Finally, understanding how our family, friends, and neighbors think about this issue helps us have more productive conversations toward common goals.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
This lesson will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the corresponding module in Canvas for specific assignments, deliverables, and due dates.
If you have questions, please feel free to post them to the "Have a question about the lesson?" discussion forum in Canvas. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help a classmate.
Before we dig into public perception of climate change, we need to establish an understanding of the underpinnings of these perceptions. Some of this will seem directly linked and obviously correlated, but some if it may not.
I am a geographer, so I tend to think of things at different scales. For public opinion on climate change (or really any topic) where the discussion can be heated and politically divisive, I think it's always a good idea to zoom out. If we zoom out far enough, we can usually find some common ground. Let's look at this in an overly simplistic way for a minute just to make the point. If we zoom way out, I think we could build strong consensus among diverse audiences that it's important that the Earth can sustain human life. That statement feels very non-threatening or confrontational. Now of course, as we Zoom in, things get a bit messy. While we might all still agree on this point for a bit, we may fundamentally disagree on how we define the Earth as being in good enough shape to sustain us, or even what we mean by sustaining us. And do we mean all of human life or do we start to get selfish? Are we concerned mostly about sustaining our current economy? See, very messy. If we zoom in even more, we get an even more complicated look at priorities. Sure, maybe I do genuinely think that we need to take good care of the planet, but perhaps that doesn't align with other issues which are more immediately pressing to me and my family. Maybe I'm concerned that better care of the planet means me losing my job and ability to support my family. Or taking better care of the planet means higher taxes I cannot afford or otherwise do not support. Or maybe I'm very concerned about national security or education or health care or my local economy and thinking about taking care of the planet takes a back seat to things that feel more immediately relevant to my day. We zoomed way in and scattered our consensus.
I raise these points to say that part of the human dimensions of climate change is understanding how our friends, family, and neighbors come to feel the way about it that they do. It's easy to sit here and say shouldn't spend time on whether someone 'believes' in climate change - and to an extent, that's true. It's more about understanding the science than believing in it. After all, the climate is changing whether I believe that or not. However, if we want to do something about it, we need to create constructive conversations on the topic, and that can't happen if we don't take a step back to appreciate how people arrive at their opinions and beliefs.
Here's the good news and the bad news about climate change all in one statement: it touches pretty much everything. Why is that good news?!? Because it gives us a lot of opportunity to connect with people. As we've already seen, even people who care about climate change might not identify it as their top priority (in daily life or at the polls). However, there is something that they really care about - and chances are, climate change may impact it.
I'll give you a personal example. Remember Tom Butler, our hog farmer friend in North Carolina? Tom wasn't the only farmer I worked with. I had hog farmers in North Carolina and dairy farmers in New York who were all implementing those same lagoon cover digesters on their farms to manage manure and earn some carbon credit revenue on the side. And to be perfectly honest with you, I had more than one farmer (definitely NOT Tom!) tell me that they didn't believe in climate change, but they were happy to cash carbon credit checks from people who did. And while I didn't say this to them, what I thought was, "Well, good news - the atmosphere doesn't care why you've reduced emissions, just that you have!" Those farmers weren't just in it for the carbon credit revenue - I promise you, it wasn't that much. However, those lagoon cover digesters served a lot of other important functions for them. Many of them found their farms increasingly encroached on by development and as it turns out, though we all enjoy food, many people don't like the way farms smell and they complain about it a lot. The odor control offered by the lagoon covers was very beneficial to some of those farmers. Others, including Tom, really enjoyed the peace of mind from not worrying about a hurricane parking over the farm and flooding the open air lagoons over their tops anymore - the water quality nightmare that stems from that was quite the headache. Others needed a new strategy to successfully manage their manure. So, in all of these cases, we were doing something that benefited the climate but we were often doing it for other reasons. The climate is fine with that.
So while it's absolutely important that we try to educate people about the science of climate change and why it matters for people (not polar bears), we need to recognize that it can't be everyone's priority. But those of us who do view it as a priority have a unique and important opportunity to integrate climate solutions with our families', friends', and neighbors' top priorities. Instead of asking people to come to you, meet them where they are. I like to think of it as coming through the back door to address climate change by focusing first on how we make our communities better places to live. It helps us zoom in without so much of the mess.
We don't need to spend too much time stuck in the quagmire of politics and climate change. That's time better spent in GEOG 432. However, it's worth noting that for better or worse, this is currently a politically divisive topic. However, it's not that simple. I repeat: it's not that simple. American politics has this unfortunate tendency to be very binary, especially in a time with such partisan divide as now (thanks, two party system!). But perhaps if you take nothing else away from this class, I want you to walk away with this: we can't let broader politics define our willingness to act on climate. We just can't.
So right now, it may seem as though democrats or more liberal-leaning folks are the ones who support climate action and republicans or more conservative-leaning folks do not. And you'll see in the public opinion readings that this bears out to a large extent. But it's not the whole story, and in this class we're not making generalized assumptions based on politics.
First things first - it hasn't always been this way. Conservation has historically been well, conservative. Some of our more landmark environmental policies have been enacted under Republican leaders - the establishment of the national parks system, the EPA, Clean Air and Water Acts - all under Republican leadership. It's really only been since the early 2000s that we've seen it become a political hot potato. And we could go on an expedition to find out why, but we don't need to for this class. What I want you to understand is that while we see a lot of divisiveness on the issue in Congress along party lines, that doesn't play out as well in the public (just wait until you check out those Yale Climate Opinion maps!).
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I want to demonstrate that there is a place for careful stewardship of our natural resources within conservative values (there are those values again - influencing our positions on things!).
So really, I just wanted to take a step back and say that while on the surface we may think we understand the party lines, and that is true in many ways, it's not good to make generalized judgments. Instead, we need to find ways for everyone to work together to address climate change while also addressing the values that matter most to them.
This week has really just been a bit of a pause for us to think about how we connect with people on climate change.
Key takeaways:
You have reached the end of Lesson 8! Double-check the lesson assignments in the corresponding lesson module in Canvas to make sure you have completed all of the tasks listed there.