Fighting Climate Change is Wildly Popular but Most Americans Don’t Know That
August 22, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Just after the U.S. Congress passed the nation's most substantial legislation aimed at battling climate change, a new study shows that the average American badly underestimates how much their fellow citizens support substantive climate policy. While 66-80% of Americans support climate action, the average American believes that number is 37-43%, the study found.
“It’s stunning how universal and shared that idea is, among every demographic,” said Gregg Sparkman, the paper’s first author who did this work as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton and is now an assistant professor at Boston College.
The research, co-authored by Elke Weber, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and professor of psychology and the School of Public and International Affairs, was published in Nature Communications today.
The study found that conservatives underestimated national support for climate policies to the greatest degree but, liberals also believed that a minority of Americans support climate action. The misperception was the norm in every state, across policies, and among every demographic tested, including political affiliation, race, media consumption habits, and rural vs. suburban. The actions that the researchers surveyed were major climate policies that could play a role in the United States mitigating climate change, including a carbon tax, siting renewable energy projects on public lands, sourcing electricity from 100% renewable resources by 2035, and the Green New Deal. The trend of Americans largely underestimating such support held true for every single policy.
The study showed a link between consuming conservative media and high levels of misperception, even when controlling for personal politics. The researchers also found that living in a red state, and having less exposure to climate marches or protests was linked to a greater discrepancy between estimates of popularity and actual popularity of climate policies. According to the paper, supporters of climate action outnumber opponents two to one, but Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. Sparkman said that this underestimation of support is problematic because people tend to conform to what they think others believe, which would weaken actual support for such policies.
Read more here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/962606
caltrek’s comment: This is one reason I think gloom and doom prophets may be doing more harm than good. Sure, there is a hell of a lot of bad news coming out about draughts, famines, forest fires, floods, etc. Still, anyway you slice it, 66-80% public support is impressive.
I think this also points to the real culprits in our march to the stupidity singularity: politicians who care more about carbon-based fuel industry campaign donations than they do about public support.
Don't mourn, organize.
-Joe Hill