Climate Politics on the Eve of the US Elections
As the signs of rapid climate change increasingly mount, the sheer scale of the global transformations required across industry, transportation, energy, and many other domains to pull the earth back from the brink over the next two decades is daunting. Even more concerning, existing political institutions--particularly in the United States--appear to be unable to respond with the ambitious set of policies that are needed urgently.  As Bill McKibben writes, we are at a World War II moment in the fight to keep the earth livable, but so far the means--the political leverage--to fight that war are sorely lacking. The problem is a large power imbalance between, on the one hand, those supporting the status quo, including the major energy producers more or less aligned with the budget hawks and market fundamentalists in Washington, and, on the other, the scientists, activists, and parts of civil society who advocate for change. Modest forward movement in US policy over the past eight years has been achieved primarily through occasional actions taken unilaterally by the Obama administration.
The US elections in November may provide some additional political opportunities. If Hillary Clinton becomes president and Democrats take back the Senate and make major gains in the House, one can envision additional steps beyond those taken by the Obama administration. But, it would be foolish to expect the sort of major initiatives in public policy that are needed with the reshuffled configuration of power in Washington. We may get faster gradualism, but it will be gradualism just the same.
Foolish, that is, absent major mobilization from below. Fortunately, there is a growing activist movement, prominently seen recently in the North Dakota Access Pipeline action, and fully engaged in many other locations throughout the US and in other countries. These movements have wrong-footed the oil giants to some extent as they have been able to put divestment on the table and have been waging battles in court to hold Exxon and its partners accountable for withholding knowledge about the role of fossil fuels in climate change as well as for the environmental damage they have caused.Â
But the conditions for major mobilizations in the United States are mixed at best. The public profile of climate change and climate activism is depressingly low in the United States. In the 2016 presidential and vice-presidential debates, for example, no questions were asked about climate change and the topic only came up briefly. During the primaries, Bernie Sanders said very forcefully that climate change was the number one security problem for the United States and the rest of the world. But that view was dismissed or ignored by much of the mainstream media and has remained outside of mainstream political debate in this country.
This state of affairs leads to the pressing question of what can be done to raise the profile of climate change issues. Recent polling indicates that there may be opportunities to spur greater public support for major change. Data collected in the past couple of years show that there is increasing recognition at all levels of society, but particularly among younger demographics, that climate change is real and is being caused by human activities. Even more encouraging, there is greater support for taking action to address it. On the other hand, as will be seen, such support is rather soft as climate change appears not to be seen as the crisis it is. The challenge for climate activists is to mobilize more committed supporters, heighten concerns about global warming society-wide, and convince more US leaders and constituencies that climate change is a profound threat that has to be addressed immediately. To accomplish this transformation of the public sphere, the climate movement will have to do a better job making its case, demonstrating the urgency and magnitude of the problem while also showing that activism can lead to tangible results.
By the Numbers: Changes in Public Opinion
A paper jointly published in March, 2016 by the George Mason Center for Climate Communication and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reviewed the findings of surveys from 2014 to 2016 about American attitudes toward climate change. Briefly, the polling revealed that in just the past two years, there has been a significant increase in the number of American voters who believe that global warming is happening. According to the survey, three quarters of all Americans think global warming is happening, including more than half of Republican voters. At the same time, on the crucial question of whether global warming is caused by human activity, 56% say that global warming is mostly caused by human activities.  Seventy five percent of all registered democrats believe this is the case, while 49% of "liberal" or "moderate" republicans agree. Only 26% of "conservative republicans" agree.
On the question of concern about global warming, 57% of all registered voters are very or somewhat worried, with democrats (88% of "liberal" democrats and 67% of "moderate or conservative" dems) being far more concerned than republicans (48% moderate republicans and only 21 % of conservative republicans). Forty-nine percent of independent voters have such concerns.
In terms of support for presidential candidates' positions, 23% overall said they would be much more likely and 19% said somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate who strongly supported taking action. Is this a high number? It is hard to say. On the one hand, 42% saying that their vote would be at least partially dependent on a candidate's position on taking action to address global warming might be impressive. Certainly political movements have made great strides in the past with less public support. But for this survey, one has to wonder if voter attitudes might have been affected by the survey itself. After answering questions about their views on climate change and its importance as an issue, it is possible if not likely that respondents would be significantly more inclined to say they would vote on the basis of a candidate's position. Or, put more casually, "yes, now that you have got me thinking about this, I do think I am likely to vote on that basis."
More telling are the responses to questions asking the respondents to rank issues of importance and this is where support for measures to address climate change shows its softness. Even among liberal democratic voters, climate change ranked 6th on their list of concerns, behind the economy, health care, income inequality, protecting the environment, and education. Breaking global warming away from other environmental concerns is an issue one could take with the authors of the survey, but even so, there are several other issues that rank above global warming for even the most supportive segment of the voting public.
Moving to other segments, global warming ranked in 13th place for moderate and conservative democrats, 21st place among liberal and moderate republicans, and dead last among conservative republicans: 23rd out of 23 choices offered to the respondents.
Still, as noted above, attitudes are changing under the surface, mostly outside of the public sphere. Particularly interesting are attitudes on the right. In a 2016 poll the group Young Conservatives for Energy Reform found that 85% of young republicans (ages 18-35) believe the world is getting warmer and 77% agree that human activity plays a significant role. Fifty-five percent strongly or "somewhat" support the recent Paris agreement, while 73% have a favorable view of the clean energy industry, 59% have a favorable view of the Environmental Protection Agency, and 58% strongly or somewhat support a "revenue-neutral" "carbon-based fuels tax.
It appears that these shifts in conservative public opinion are being mirrored by small but meaningful shifts in Congress. Just this year, republican Senator Lindsey Graham, along with 4 GOP co-sponsors in the Senate filed an amendment to an energy bill that said climate change was real and human activity contributed to it. Meanwhile in the House, 33 republicans broke ranks to vote with their democratic colleagues to defeat an amendment to an appropriations bill that would "eliminate funding for the Air, Climate and Energy Research Program under the EPA.”
The effect of these shifts in conservative attitudes and political behavior is still unclear and the legislators mentioned, as one might expect, have not been consistent on climate issues. At a minimum, however, it is quite possible that these shifts should help to open public space for a fuller discussion of the implications of climate change and the importance of public policy in addressing it. There appears to be an opportunity here for activists.
It is fair to say, then, that the potential for significant change exists and that underlying trends in public opinion are significant and positive. But there needs to be a breakthrough in the public domain, meaning that climate change needs to become a top-tier issue for those who recognize the reality and favor government action. The challenge to making this happen is a topic I plan to address in a coming post.Â
