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May 10, 2022
It’s the final episode of Season 3 of The Climate Conversation, which takes a close look at the newest version of the Climate Opinion Maps developed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Yale has been publishing these maps since 2014, which display responses to prompts such as “global warming is happening” and “Congress should do more to address global warming” across different geographic levels in the United States. Dan and Emma speak with Dr. Jennifer Marlon, the lead researcher for the Climate Opinion Maps, about how these responses have changed over time, what these maps say about public support for climate policies, and how these opinions might continue to evolve in the future. The Climate Conversation will return for Season 4 in September 2022.
Show notes:
Yale Climate Opinion Maps
Opinion piece from the New York Times on climate opinion
EESI article on public renewable energy support
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Today with me is my usual cohost, the great Emma Johnson, for our last episode of season three. Emma, can you believe the end of another season is upon us?
Emma Johnson: I can't, Dan, this season has truly flown by. We've covered so much. We started out by discussing coastal resilience in Charleston, South Carolina, and along the coast of Louisiana. And then we took to the skies with the United Airlines. And then we dove into the complex new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. We also talked about sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty in Puerto Rico, environmental justice legislation in Washington State, and electric school buses in Colorado. We really have covered a lot of ground.
Dan: It's really amazing to think about all these different topics we've covered and all the incredible people we've spoken to. It's almost like climate change covers everything and involves everyone. And no one should worry, The Climate Conversation will be back. We're going to take a little bit of a break. We will plan our next season. But we will 100% be back at the beginning of September. And also we still have today's episode, and that's going to be a really good conversation.
Emma: That's right, Dan. Today's episode is on public opinion, which we don't often cover on this podcast. In February of this year, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication released the latest version of their climate opinion maps, which maps survey data to show how Americans climate change awareness, risk perceptions and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro area and county levels. They have been releasing updated versions of these maps since 2014. And the link to view these maps will be available in the show notes of our website if you want to go check it out.
Dan: At EESI, we’ve been following Yale's work on this topic for some time. Before we even had a podcast, we've had briefings about climate change and the American mind, which featured Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, who is the director of the program at Yale. And now a little bit later, we're looking forward to learning about the latest iteration of these maps how public perception of climate change has changed over time, and importantly, how this information can inform and influence the way we discuss climate issues with policymakers, but also with the general public and the media.
Emma: To help us dive into all of this and more. I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Jennifer Marlon to the show. Jenn is a research scientist for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which is based at the Yale School of the Environment. She is the lead researcher for the climate opinion maps. Her research focuses on the social and physical dimensions of climate change, particularly extreme weather events and past climate changes. Jenn, thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Jennifer Marlon: Thanks for having me.
Emma: I first want to start with something that jumped out right away to me, when I look at these maps. All of the questions are framed using the phrase “global warming”, instead of what I would say is the more commonly used phrase today, “climate change”. Can you talk about why the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication continues to use global warming in these surveys?
Jenn: Yes, well, a primary reason is that we want to make sure that we can make comparisons over time. And we've been, we've been conducting these surveys for over 12 years now. And we started with global warming. It was the term that the public was using more often in their own discussions and conversations. And so we started with that term. And in order to make sure that we can make apples to apples comparisons, we've kept using it. There are some differences in how people perceive climate change versus global warming. And people do use climate change more often than global warming right now. But we know that in general, people understand these terms to be roughly synonymous, unless you're a scientist, perhaps. But we actually did a split survey in 2014, where half our sample received questions about climate change and the other half global warming. And we found in fact that people were more worried about global warming, they were more likely to understand that it was human caused. And this was especially true for people of color. So global warming has more emotion behind it. For some people, it might also be a little bit more politically polarizing. So in the end, we use those phrases interchangeably. And sometimes we talk about climate crisis or climate disruption. We try to use all of these terms, and they all bring different dimensions, but they have different emotional impacts as well.
Emma: Building off of my first question on survey design, the climate opinion maps also cover an enormous amount of data. You can look at responses to prompts such as global warming is happening and fun research into renewable energy sources, among many, many others. What is the process like to assemble this much information?
Jenn: We've been collecting our survey data twice a year for over a dozen years. And each time part of our questions stay the same, so that we can track these changes over time. And part of the survey includes new questions. So we might have a focus on health or energy, or advocacy and activism, or other topics, extreme weather, for example. Each sample is at least 1,000 people, sometimes it's 1,200 or more. And the samples are carefully selected to be nationally representative when you're comparing them to the US Census Bureau benchmarks. So the data truly reflect all Americans, capturing the full diversity of states or geography, ages, education levels, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and more. And so people are often surprised that you can really understand accurately what all Americans think with such a small sample. But if you think about it, you don't have to ask every single person in the United States what they like to eat for breakfast in order to know in general, what are the patterns, what foods people are choosing to eat for breakfast. We use those surveys to go ahead and make our maps. But the maps are not based on samples of people in every county, for example. It's not just an average of the people in a particular county. The way we make our survey opinion maps is that we combine or pool the survey data from people across the country and combine it with information that is locally relevant. So we combine the survey data with the places where people come from, what the politics are in that local area, information about economics. So we include the CO2 emissions, for example of each county in our estimates of what people think about climate change in that county. And so the maps are based on both the raw survey data, but also related relevant political, economic, geographic information to make accurate estimates of what proportion of people believe a certain thing about climate change in every local area that we're studying.
Dan: Thanks, Jenn. When you look at the latest version of the map, you're seeing data from how respondents answered and 2021. And the first question you see sort of the default question that pops up when you look at the map is, is global warming happening? And 72% of people answered yes to that question. How has that number changed over time? And is relative to the other questions you ask, has that changed more or less over time? And what's the question that you've seen the biggest change in since you've been collecting data?
Jenn: Yeah, this is a great question. So if you look at the full trends for the question of is global warming happening over the past 12 years or so, it is surprisingly flat, or it looks surprisingly stable. And what we find is that, for the most part, people's beliefs about climate change have been pretty stable. But there have been some variations. So we started back in 2008 and opinion was just a little bit lower than it is today. And then it took kind of a nosedive, five or 10 percentage points, depending on where you are, from 2008 to 2010. And, of course, we had the Great Recession then, and it was related to the financial collapse. But more importantly, Obama was elected. And it was the birth of the Tea Party. And it was more a result of those political changes of what people were seeing about climate change that really caused that nosedive. Since then, we've just been kind of bouncing back up a little bit at a time. But we basically stayed within a five or 10 percentage point range of variation over the past decade or so. However, what we find is that in just the last year, opinions have really started to change. And in particular, people are becoming more worried and they're becoming more likely to say that they are being harmed right now by global warming. So just to put a few concrete numbers out there, back in 2008, 33% of Americans said that they thought the US was being harmed right now by global warming. It slowly increased over time, a few percentage points each year, until last year, it was at 45%. So we went from 33% in 2008 to 45% in 2020. And then in our last survey, we've jumped to 55%. So we had a 10 percentage point increase in the past six months, basically about people saying that people in the US are being harmed right now by global warming, and that's one of the biggest changes we've seen. Another big change that we've seen is people hearing about it in the media. And I think this is related, of course, to why people now think that others are being harmed, because the media is doing a better job covering it. And in particular, it's the extreme weather events that they're covering. It's the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, it's the more intense hurricanes and flooding, the tornadoes that are happening further east than they were before. It's all of these events changing. The media is helping people connect the dots, and the public is responding and learning.
Emma: One of the most interesting results to me from these 2021 maps is the disconnect between global warming harming others but not harming the respondent personally. So those are two separate questions that are asked on the survey and displayed on the maps. So 68% of people think global warming would harm people in developing countries, and 64% of people think global warming will harm people in the US. But only 47% of people think global warming will harm them personally. Why do you think this gap exists? And has it been growing or shrinking over time? What do you think is necessary to close it?
Jenn: This is a really striking finding. But it is very robust. We see year after year that people still perceive climate change or global warming as a distant threat. They see it affecting other people in other faraway places and you know, not really hitting very close to home. At least that's how it's been. Part of this is just our inherent human psychology, we have this sense of optimism, whether we're talking about you know, cancer, or risks of investing in the stock market, we think these bad things are going to happen to other people and not to us. And that applies to climate change as well. But that idea is reinforced by media coverage of polar bears on melting ice and calving glaciers, you know, how many of us live at the edge of a melting glacier, or how many of us see polar bears in our everyday life, it just seems very far away still. And that is still a pervasive problem. The other problem, though, is that there has been a, you know, active misinformation campaign to help people think that this is a distant threat, but that we're somehow you know, protected, that it's not real, that the causes aren't human activities, and that the impacts are, you know, just more of things that have always happened in the past, we've always had hurricanes and storms, climate has always changed. Yes, that's true. But this time, it's different. This time, we are changing the climate. So I think that gap is shrinking over time. And I don't have exact numbers on that. But we can see just in the levels of perceived personal harm, they're going up. And I think those are starting to meet, you know, the data on how much people think others are going to be harmed. The media is covering this issue more especially as it relates to extreme weather. But we can't rely on people's experience with extreme weather to convince them that climate change is a serious risk. Because the connections are complicated. And we are really bad at understanding the systemic effects of warming temperatures and a warming planet, the effects it's going to have on agriculture, on human health, on sea levels, on coastal cities, on infrastructure, on our economy more broadly, these are really complicated, cascading causal chains, and we need people to help the public understand and to help decision makers understand the systemic nature of this risk and how urgent and important it needs to be as a priority to safeguard not just future generations and other species or plants and animals, but ourselves and our children and our institutions. It's really vital. And we have very little time.
Dan: When you visit the climate opinion maps online, you realize just how many issues are covered in the questions that you ask. And among those questions are questions about policy options, such as funding research for renewable energy, regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax. And you realize that at least according to your data, these policies have strong public support. Generally, more than half of the respondents want more climate action from our leaders, from the president, from Congress, governors, local officials. How would you like public officials to use your data to help them understand better maybe what the public and whether it's the public in general or the public in their state or their public in their district, think about climate change, and specifically think about some of these solutions to climate change?
Jenn: Yeah, well, what you just said is really important, that a majority of people in the U.S. want Congress and their local officials and corporations and citizens to do more. Strong majorities. And yet the widespread perception out there, not just among the public, but among legislators and decision makers and leaders, is that there's still a lot of, you know, debate, that the public isn't in support, to the extent that they really are. And in fact, researchers have actually studied how widespread the misperceptions are of people in the U.S. House and Senate. There is an opinion piece, I believe, is in the New York Times, that said Congress has no clue what Americans want. And that was written by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger, and Leah Stokes where they actually studied the misperceptions about support for climate change policy. The researchers found, for example, that liberal Democrats underestimate by six percentage points, how much Americans even think that this is a problem, is a serious problem. But conservative Republicans underestimate it by 21 percentage points. So these are widespread misperceptions. And they're really important, you need to close that gap. Because ultimately, we are social animals. And we care about what other people think and do and we're watching what other people think and do. And we want to be in alignment with what the public wants, because the public is getting more and more concerned. And they really they in most, almost all cases, they support much stronger action than what we're getting right now. There are, of course, differences on what conservative Republicans versus liberal Democrats support, for example, relating to renewable energy. But in general, almost everyone is in support of more renewable energy and switching to renewable energy. It's really only when you get into issues of requiring more stringent government regulation, that you start to see the differences really come out.
Emma: You've been working on putting these maps together for a number of years now, Jenn, and been involved with the data and just been immersed in this work for a long time. Is there anything from this latest iteration of maps from these 2021 versions that really surprised you?
Jenn: One of the big surprises is that there is still a lot of misunderstanding out there about the fundamentals. Most of us agree, most people in most counties agree that it's happening, at least now we've gotten that far. But there's still widespread misperception that burning fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas is the primary reason that the planet is warming. There's no scientific debate about that. But only 57% of the public understands that. And the other fundamental is that there's a widespread misperception that there's still scientific debate, legitimate scientific debate, going on about the causes, or the seriousness of the impacts. And yet, there is no more scientific debate about that that debate ended decades ago, really. And yet, the public often isn't hearing it. So that's an area where work needs to be done, right, basic raising of awareness and communication needs to be done to help people understand that it's a real problem. It's a serious threat. And it's getting worse, the longer we wait to address it. But the other issue is that even regardless of whether you think it's a serious problem, or humans are causing it, almost everyone wants to transition to renewable energy. Whether you think carbon dioxide is a problem or not. People intuitively understand that clean, renewable energy that doesn't involve digging up stuff from underground and burning it and causing pollution is bad. They know that's bad inherently. And they know that they all want clean air, clean water, it's better for our health, it's better for our planet, it has all these co-benefits. And I think people just fundamentally get that.
Dan: What do you hope people who look at these maps for the first time take away from them? And is there anything you can say about how you think future respondents might answer these questions, how their responses might change and in future years and future iterations of the map?
Jenn: We're starting to collect a lot of survey data from other countries. And it's been very eye opening. And I think, in some ways, where we are likely to change in the U.S. is that we're likely to become more worried as because the weather is changing around us. And it's not just the weather, we're starting to see that our infrastructure is aging and crumbling. And while we're investing in it and repairing it, it's going to be very costly to do that. And the justice issues around climate change. I think people are really coming to understand what it means to our day to day lives, not just for existing, vulnerable and underserved communities, but even for the wealthiest communities, people living along the shoreline. So I think we're getting more worried. And we're going to continue to take this issue more seriously. That is the trajectory that the survey data show us very clearly. And in fact, people in other countries are already there. So we're playing catch up in a way with the public in Europe and other parts of the world, in Asia and in South America, many folks in other countries are more worried than people are in the U.S., because the U.S. has been a little bit insulated. And so I think that's, that's where we're headed. And hopefully, we will also be heading towards more support for addressing the problem and solving it.
Dan: Jenn, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, you've been a great guest. It's been fascinating to explore this data with you and to hear your great insights into these maps, and what we should take away from them. These are really great resources. I hope everyone in our audience takes a moment to go check them out. We look forward to working with you in the future to help everyone understand what everyone thinks about climate change. So thanks so much for being here today.
Jenn: Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure.
Dan: Well, Emma, that was an awesome conversation. It was really, really great to hear about the really cool work that's happening in Yale about climate change public opinion. One thing, actually, two things kind of stuck out to me from the conversation. The first was, Jenn mentioned extreme weather and people's experience with extreme weather as being a driver of public opinion that that was really interesting. That ties very closely to the briefing series we're currently running right now in EESI. We have two briefing series, one is Living with Climate Change. And we'll be looking at the polar vortex extreme heat, wildfires and sea level rise. And at the same time, we're doing another series, sort of a companion briefing series, called Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions. And that's looking at sort of the big technology development and deployment opportunities that we have available to us if we take advantage of them. And we put our resources to make them work and commercialized, that will help us mitigate emissions and eventually reduce the severity of those climate impacts. The second thing that kind of stuck out to me, she talked about the media a lot media coverage, and EESI, we always consider our primary audience, congressional staff and policymakers. But our resources are also used very much by the media, by reporters who want to get background on an issue by reporters who want to learn more about the issue from our briefings, facts, sheets, issue briefs, articles, you name it. And actually, educating the media about climate change is a very important strategy in our work. It's a great way for us to sort of It's a force multiplier, if you will, for getting our information out there. So I thought that was a really interesting connection. People like to maybe pick on the media a little bit, but it turns out that we all need information and the media's coverage of climate change is something is having a positive effect on people's perception of the urgency of climate change.
Emma: Those are great connections, Dan. And yes, it's definitely really interesting to think about how this conversation connects with those two briefings series that you mentioned. Jenn talked about how the awareness about climate change has been growing, especially people in the alarmed category, more people are alarmed about climate change that than ever before. And in part due because more people are experiencing climate events and extreme weather. And well, in some ways, it's good that they're more alarmed. It's also really frightening because that means extreme weather is happening more and more often and more people are being affected by it, and more people will be continued to be affected by it in the future. So it's also really powerful to see this data reflected in these maps. Knowing that it means that more people are experiencing the harmful effects of climate change. And we'll continue to do so in the future, which only drives more to me how important it is that we continue pushing for climate solutions, advocating for this work that can help us mitigate, adapt and be more resilient to the climate crisis as we continue moving on. So it was really great conversation with Jenn, I'm really happy that we got to dive into these maps, some more, which are such fantastic resources. And again, please definitely check them out, if you haven't. And with that this is the conclusion of season three of The Climate Conversation. Thank you so much listeners for joining us. It's been fascinating to explore all these different topics. If you have suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future. It would be great if you would let us know we'd love to hear about what you have to say. And you can contact us on social media at @eesionline or through email at our email address which is [email protected]. We'll be back at the beginning of September for more climate solutions. And if you want to learn more about EESI work on public opinion of climate change, you should head to our website at eesi.org. You can listen to The Climate Conversation wherever you get your podcasts. It's published as a supplement to our bi weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
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