As noted below, I am going to keep track of climate change NIMBYism – the people who don’t question the science, but claim that reducing emissions is too costly or unfair.
The list:
Continue reading “NIMBY watch”
Category: Environment
Denialist watch
Harry Clarke thinks that it is silly to keep track of the number of climate change alarmist stories. Except that he seems to believe that, reading between the lines, I am being a climate change denialist, or giving comfort to the denialists, I can’t see why it is silly. I study public opinion as a hobby, but those who do it professionally and have research assistants and money to spend keep track of media reports as part of their work. I’m doing this on the cheap. But the basic idea is the same.
But to give balance, I will also do a denialist watch. My impression is that the denialists get little mainstream media coverage apart from Andrew Bolt and the The Australian‘s opinion page, so this will test that impression.
And in an attempt to track where I think are the real politics here, ie actually doing anything about climate change despite professed public belief in it, I will also run NIMBY watch – people complaining not about the science, but about climate change policy.
The list:
Continue reading “Denialist watch”
Apocalypse watch
Just how often are we told that disaster awaits us unless we do something about global warming? Like many people, I suspect, there have been so many predictions of doom that I no longer absorb any of the detail. Is the future apocalypse announced on tonight’s news the same one as on the morning news, or is it a new one? They all the seem the same unless you pay close attention.
For the next month, I plan to keep track of global warming disaster stories in the Australian media. I am not going to count every report (that would take too long), but I want to link to as many of the separate stories as I can. I think this might be interesting as part of my series of posts on the politics of global warming. My hunch is that scaring people into action is no longer an effective strategy; it has people convinced that things need to change, but not that they personally should do much about it.
The list:
Continue reading “Apocalypse watch”
The hip pocket politics of climate change
The Treasury modelling of climate change abatement released this week put the likely cost at about $1 a day for the average household. An ANU poll (pdf) also released this week confirmed a general willingness to pay higher prices to protect the environment. But how does this dollar-a-day price to climate change abatement compare to more specific polling on the issue?
A Climate Institute poll of marginal seats last November found just 13% of its sample were prepared to pay $30 a month or more, the cost range according to Treasury. The annual Lowy Institute survey, which was carried out during July, found only 19% of its respondents were prepared to pay $21 a month or more.
Though there has been an advertising campaign for the government’s package since these two polls, it was only telling people what they already thought (something needs to be done), not selling them on a price, so I doubt the punters’ opinion on how much they are happy to spend will have softened. It is more likely that it has hardened, as voters focus on protecting their short term financial position during what will at best be a significant slowdown, if not a recession.
Though the dollar-a-day at least gives the government’s spin doctors something specific to work with, the polling shows that they are starting from a very low base of support.
Minority support for a 2010 emissions reduction scheme
Today’s Newpoll finds opinion on climate change action rather more affected by the financial crisis than the Climate Institute’s poll last week suggested.
While the Climate Institute found 22% agreeing that the financial crisis meant that action on climate change should be delayed, Newspoll found 30% supporting a delay. On top of that 21% of respondents were against a carbon pollution reduction scheme, nearly double the 11% opposition Newspoll found in response to a differently-worded question back in July. Wtith 5% uncommitted, if Newspoll is right only a minority – 44% – now supports the government’s scheme of a 2010 implementation of an ETS.
The poor presentation of the Climate Change Institute results makes it difficult to fully analyse the reasons for the very different conclusions the polls reach. But Newspoll’s question on delay pointed out that energy ‘may become more expensive’, a better question in balancing the competing considerations, and so more likely to approximate the ‘real world’ reactions to an ETS.
One in five conditionally support climate change policy
Not for the first time, inadequate presentation of a Climate Institute survey makes it hard to interpret the results.
Their latest online Auspoll survey asks the important question of whether people believe that ‘turmoil in financial markets’ means that government ‘should delay action on climate change’. The results are agree 22%, disagree 36%, and ‘no real opinion’ 16%. What the other 26% thought is not explained, though it may be that they have dropped the ‘strongly agree’ from the table. If that’s the case, 62% disagree.
The 22% matches the approximately one in five in other polling who favour a strategic approach to climate change abatement which is dependent on general conditions.
The real greenhouse denialists, part four
As media reports of today’s release of the annual Lowy Institute opinion survey noted, the masses may want climate change stopped as a general principle, but there isn’t much that they are prepared to personally do about it. They may not deny the reality of climate change, but they do deny any seriously responsibility for it.
When asked how much they were prepared to pay extra on their monthly electricity bill to help solve climate change, a fifth of Lowy’s respondents wouldn’t pay anything, 32% would pay $10 or less, 20% would pay $11 to $20, and just 19% would pay $21 or more. Those refusing to pay anything is down on the 28% in marginal seats last November according to a Climate Institute survey, but perhaps if the mortgage-belt nature of many marginals were taken into account there would be no real difference between the polls.
Perhaps the more interesting aspect of Lowy’s survey was that climate change had slipped as a foreign policy goal from 75% rating it as very important last year to 66% this year, though global warming as a critical threat to Australia’s interests is more stable at 66% also, down only 2% on the year.
Economic issues seem to be driving this change, with the biggest increase in foreign policy goals being ‘strengthening the Australian economy’, up from 60% to 70%. But given that respondents could if they wanted class every issue as ‘very important’ the drop in ‘tackling climate change’ seems significant.
Perhaps the public is getting bored of the daily prediction of disaster. I may have missed later ads in the government’s climate change advertising campaign (I spent most of the month in Japan), but what I saw before I left was just repeating the same old messages any non-comatose person has already heard hundreds of times before. Something different has to be said to regain attention, such as how much all this is really going to cost Australian consumers.
The climate change ends and means gap
We still don’t have any polling on what global impact the Australian public believes our proposed emissions trading scheme would have, but this morning’s Newspoll does explore opinion on the strategic issue of whether Australia should act alone or wait for other countries.
While a clear majority – 61% – say we should act even if other countries do not, 36% either think we should wait or don’t believe we should have an emissions training scheme at all.
This fits a common pattern in polling on this subject of the massive majorities believing in climate change (at least mid-80s) shrinking when it comes to any specific action.
The medium and long-term politics of climate change policy continue to remain hard to predict.
The sociology of the climate change debate
John Quiggin and other vigilant bloggers swarmed on this climate change ‘denialist’ article by American historian Arthur Herman, who was in Australia recently as a guest of the CIS (to talk about the Enlightenment rather than climate change).
Quiggin argues that ‘just about everyone on the political right [has signed] up to a set of beliefs that are dictated entirely by political tribalism’.
This is a little tough but tribalistic explanations surely explain much – on both sides of the debate. Very few people are in any position to assess the science, and so the issue has to be judged via various heuristics, such as expert views, personal observation and experience (a long drought), and the views of other members of one’s social group. These heuristics help explain why an emissions trading scheme has majority support despite minimal public knowledge of even what it is, much less an informed personal assessment of whether or not it is likely to work.
It would not have been hard to guess what preconceptions someone like Arthur Herman would bring to this issue. In the 1990s he published a book called The Idea of Decline in Western History, which gives us 400 pages of prophets of doom before it even gets to environventalism. To Herman, the climate change apocalyptics must look like just another in a long line of doomsayers, with the same (minimal) prospects of being proven right.
Continue reading “The sociology of the climate change debate”
And yet more climate change polling
The climate change polls are flowing almost as quickly as predictions of impending climate doom, with two more out today.
In the Newspoll survey reported in The Australian, confirmation of previous research showing that the overwhelming majority (84%) of people believe that climate change is occurring. Of these people, only 3% believe that it is not caused by human activity.
And further exploration of the issue of whether Australia should stall an emissions trading scheme until the major polluters agree to cut back, or proceed with Labor’s 2010 plan. Last week in the ACNielsen survey 19% wanted to wait, with Newspoll this week finding 23% support for that position (as is usual for this subject, some big age differences with the 18-34 group much stronger on the issue than the 50+).
The Climate Institute has only a partial report of their survey, which asked what the federal opposition should do, with the three options being start a carbon emissions trading scheme in 2010, start before 2010, and start in 2012 or later.
The results are confusingly presented, with the press release stating both that 69% of Australians support the on or before 2010 options, and that 80% support the federal governemnt’s policy, even though there wasn’t obviously a question directly asking that. The latter is more consistent with the other polling, however.
Unfortunately, none of the pollsters have yet explored whether voters understand that Australia reducing emissions would make a very minor difference in itself, and won’t save the barrier reef or the Murray River or any of the other justifications commonly given.
Andrew Norton 