A new study shows that climate change isn’t a problem for future generations, it’s a problem affecting us right now.
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The big news on the climate change front as of late was the publication of a new National Climate Assessment. The report makes it clear that the effects of climate change aren’t things just future generations will have to worry about; rather, they are already having a powerful impact on American society right now. As The New York Times summarized:
The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.
Such sweeping changes have been caused by an average warming of less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over most land areas of the country in the past century, the scientists found. If greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to escalate at a rapid pace, they said, the warming could conceivably exceed 10 degrees by the end of this century.
Furthermore the report is hardly the product of some vast left-wing conspiracy. It was supervised and approved by a committee that represents a broad cross-section of American society, including representatives of oil companies. All of which brings up the question of why so many Americans deny the existence of climate change when even oil companies are now acknowledging it’s a real threat?
Well the answer is pretty simple. I completely agree with Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein that the big reason we have so much more climate change denial in the US than in the rest of the developed world is that people listen to opinion leaders:
Americans are more climate-skeptical (if that’s the right term) because the U.S. has a two-party system with one party dedicated to climate skepticism. Most people follow trusted opinion leaders, at least on those issues where they have little personal stake and little personal expertise (which means most issues for most of us).
In other words, because there are a lot of Republican politicians and conservative thought leaders who claim that climate change doesn’t exist, a lot of people who listen to those leaders are going to agree with them, no matter what the climate experts say. A similar thing happened during the Iraq War when it became pretty apparent early on that there was no secret nuclear weapons program and there were no connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. But lot of people, mostly conservative, didn’t change their mind in opinion polls. In no small part because lots of Republican politicians just kept claiming that just weren’t true.
All of this is both good and bad news for people wanting to take action when it comes to climate change. The bad news is that as long as movement conservatives decide to deny the existence of climate change and GOP politicians decide to follow their lead lots of people are still going to claim that climate change doesn’t exist. But the good news is that public opinion could change if party actors in the GOP decided to stand up to conservative hardliners, or if conservatives decided to focus on another issue. Either way, political change is driven more by coalition building and mobilizing resources more than aggregate public opinion, so you can still make progress even if chunks of the public disagree with you.
In short: Don’t give, Environmental Folks! Even and especially if people say silly things.
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Whether they talk about it publicly or not, oil companies today deal with the effects of climate change on a daily basis just to make money. They’d be stupid to ignore climate change if they want to maximise their profits. They have to recognize climate change, because if they don’t they won’t be fully prepared to drill in the Arctic or set up an offshore oil rig. You can just talk to the old timer oil workers in Barrow, Alaska, and hear firsthand how the oil industry is fully aware that the climate is changing. You better believe they’re keeping… Read more »