Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Why do people say they are concerned about climate change, but refuse to pay more taxes to fix the problem?
The Unprecedented Surge in Fear About Climate Change
More Americans than ever are worried about climate change, but they’re not willing to pay much to stop it.
ROBINSON MEYER
JAN 23, 2019A surging number of Americans understand that climate change is happening and believe that it could harm their family and the country, according to a new poll from Yale and George Mason University.
But at the same time, Americans are not any more willing to pay money to fight climate change than they were three years ago, says another new poll, conducted by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago.
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The data are still striking, suggesting that U.S. concern about climate change has leapt by several points in just the past year. More than seven out of 10 Americans now say that global warming is “personally important” to them, an increase of nine points since March 2018, according to the Yale poll. More Americans than ever—29 percent—also say they are “very worried” about climate change, an eight-point increase.
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These changes show up in both new polls. The AP survey found that seven out of 10 of Americans understand climate change is happening. Even more notable: A slim majority of Republicans—52 percent—understand that climate change is real. (The AP asked questions about “climate change,” while Yale polled about “global warming.” The difference in language didn’t seem to change how people replied.)
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Yet it’s not clear that Americans are willing to do anything about fighting climate change. Many economists support a carbon tax, a policy that makes polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Forty-four percent of Americans say they would support such a tax, according to the AP.
Americans become more supportive of a carbon tax, though, when they know where the money it collects will go. Sixty-seven percent of Americans would support a carbon tax if it were used to restore forests and wetlands. Majorities also endorse a tax that would support renewable-energy R&D or public-transit improvements. But even then, most people are not willing to spend much. Seventy percent say they would vote against a $10 monthly fee tacked on to their power bill. Forty percent would oppose a $1 monthly increase.
These results don’t lend themselves to straightforward answers about what actions to take next.
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Assuming there is nothing wrong with the surveys or methodology, why aren’t people willing to pay to fix a problem they say they are concerned about?
Part of the problem might be that people don’t trust politicians. Spending the money on renovation of forests and wetlands attracts more support, presumably on the assumption that the expenditure would be transparent, that the money would actually be used for a good cause. But The Atlantic article goes on to discuss the surprise loss of a carbon tax vote in Washington State, a plebiscite which promised a lot of the carbon tax money raised would be distributed to community organisations.
The real problem might be deceptive marketing, all the years that greens have been telling us that renewable energy is the cheapest option.
Why would anyone want to pay more for something which is supposed to be cheaper?
Demands for more money to fund “cheaper” renewable energy programmes simply looks dishonest. It looks like green politicians are trying to cash in on public sympathy.
Greens neglected to explain that when they say renewables are “cheaper”, they are usually not talking about electricity bills; their cost claims are mostly based on dubious assumptions about externalities and “fossil fuel subsidies“.
Voters who have bought into the political spin about climate change and cheap renewable electricity are waiting for their green electricity bills to fall. Poor people paying the energy bills of the rich is probably not what they had in mind.
Why are Americans supposed to fix the problem…it’s not our problem
That’s the way most Americans feel. The monthly Gallup Poll on the Nation’s Most Important Problem shows that CAGW is only peripherally on the radar. It isn’t mentioned specifically and is probably under ‘environment/pollution’ at 3%. link
The two most important problems are ‘government’ at 29% and ‘immigration’ at 21%.
When the worst “CO2 polluters” (China and India) seems to ignore any actual action, why should I care ?
When our “Climate leaders” put on more air miles in a year than the average American does in a lifetime, why should I make any sacrifices ?
Most of all, no politican has every delivered a “sunny day”, so exactly why should I believe they can make the next few decades “better” ?
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is also not warming the planet. Taxation is the reason for the hysteria. You are correct, no politician has ever made anything better
I think the WORLD sees it as this:
• America has been THE dominant World Economy since the 1950s
• The [i]summation[/i] of all CO₂ output by economy? America might still hold № 1 rank
• America visibly had a huge ecological “egg on face” with acid rain
• And many a eco-activist TV program has outlined America’s coal mining egregious practices
• America until very recently (2005) remained the YoY CO₂ № 1 emitter
… connecting the dots … therefore, The Problem that The World is now Said To Be Suffering from is for the most part America’s doing. Europe an easy second. China, Russia, The Arabias, India-and-Japan falling in line too. 80% of all CO₂ emissions — to date — from 1950 to the present can be attributed to these countries.
… and therefore … the responsible nations, aggressively labelled as “polluters” and “wanton” and “egregious” and “unrelenting” and “irresponsible” and “appalling” and a whole host more, these countries [b]lead by America[/b], are completely culpable in their CO₂ emissions, and thereby, to the remediation of this problem going forward. Period. End of discussion.
Yet, though, while technically true, it has also taken a whole-planet of other consumers, polluters and emitters to really set the stage to where we are today, worldwide.
But… because by now “heads are about to explode”, the simple(ton) answer prevails: Its AMERICA! fault! Dâhmn them! They must be FORCED to pay! Money for the Marshal Islands! Money for Vanuatu! Money for the Seychelles. Money for Greece and Turkey and Botswana and Bangladesh! They’re still trying to climb up the economic ladder! Money, and more of it, fast!
Sigh… this is what happens when you give toddlers sugary drinks before bedtime.
Just saying,
[b]Goat[/b]Guy
They must be FORCED to pay! Money for … tinpot dictators and other corrupt leaders.
BSandpissonthem…..no one hid any of this from anyone….they chose to stay backward 3rd world
People are willing to buy insurance to protect themselves that problems that may happen.
If the people aren’t willing to increase taxes then that’s pretty good evidence that this so called “concern” is little more than people saying what they believe the pollsters want to hear.
Add that to number of people who are merely polishing the Social Justice Warrior credentials.
“people saying what they believe the pollsters want to hear.”
One of the many reasons that polling data is junk science and fake news.
“themselves from problems”
I don’t deal with polls. They can’t be trusted to be honest. But if I were tied down and forced to participate, I’d probably give the Politically Correct answer. If they’re willing to force me to participate, who knows WHAT they’d do if I said something they didn’t like? Even an honest, visibly true answer can trigger them. I had a pollster asking me about the Trump Economy, and I told her that they were fixing roads and building buildings all over town. Oh, was she aghast! But I wouldn’t let her talk me around to giving the answer she wanted.
Again: I don’t trust polls. I’m not sure why I didn’t immediately hang up on that one.
To an economist, that’s called “revealed preference”. Look at what people do, not what they say.
The climate has already changed. The average temperature has increased by 0.75 degrees C. since pre-industrial times. Ask yourself exactly what harmful effects have you personally experienced from this change. If, like me, you live in Canada, I can honestly say that I have not experienced any harmful effects, but I have in fact enjoyed some beneficial effects including a longer golfing season, lower heating bills and less snow to shovel. What’s not to like?
A lot depends upon how the polling questions are phrased. Just saying there is a concern doesn’t mean
they are convinced, just concerned. I’m concerned about global cooling, for example.
Correction: Climate scare ad runs are up but Americans are impervious to climate scare psychologists and policy marketing plays.
I stole the idea from here but I will rephrase it somewhat.
I will start believing that there is a crisis when those who keep telling me that there is a crisis start living their own lives as if there were a crisis.
You stole it from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.
Thank you for directing me to the original source. By the time I read it it must have been 4th hand. When it left me it was 5th hand. It’s still true.
The wealthy and powerful want the less wealthy and powerful to pay them for a scarecrow.
You didn’t steal anything- that’s a simple and very sad observation of massive hypocrisy. I wonder why the poll respondents weren’t asked about that?
oh there’s a crisis alright – take a look at these cost of power figures in the Land of Oz
https://web.archive.org/web/20190125194707/http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/01/25/david-bidstrup-a-year-has-passed-and-nothing-has-changed-in-fact-it-is-worse/
40 times more for power + they get rolling blackouts and a quarter of a million people without power.
For these folk creating the crisis It’s like say you buy a car that you know breaks down for a day a week. The solution seems to be, buy another car that breaks down one day a week and hope the days overlap. If they don’t.. buy another car that you know will break down at least once a week and so on and so on, adding service bill to service bill hoping eventually it’ll work out cheaper than buying a reliable car that doesn’t break down.
The only thing that’s “surging” is the shrill cries from the politicians and media telling people they need to ratchet up their fear. It’s easy to scare people but it will take more than fear of some nebulous boogeyman to get them to willingly part with their hard earned money. After decades of tipping points that have come and gone, “existential” threats, and “new normals” the people are wary of the climate messiahs.
Maybe most folks don’t want to spend money on a problem they don’t think can be fixed. The question of wanting to spend money on climate change presumes that whatever has changed was caused by us and we can fix it. Most folks I know don’t accept that premise.
DMA, you are just pointing out the real problem ‘ “Most folks I know don’t accept that premise.”
We just need for You the Know a Lot more people. Then it will all be fixed.
This could be part of the problem. Consider Washington State, with “the surprise loss of a carbon tax vote in Washington State, a plebiscite which promised a lot of the carbon tax money raised would be distributed to community organisations.”
I’m pretty sure the average person is smart enough to figure out that distributing “carbon tax” money to “community organisations” can have no possible impact on the climate. In fact, no amount of money thrown at anything can have any possible effect on the climate.
My suggestion, therefore, would be to use the money to tear down all the cities and move the people into widely-dispersed communities to eliminate the Urban Heat Island effect. With computers and the Internet, there’s no reason for people to live all bunched up like that, pumping extra heat into the atmosphere. Get ’em out of those high-rises and put ’em all into Levittown-sized bungalows with solar power panels on the roof.
Better yet, disconnected from the grid, so the only power they get comes from their own roof.
Well really, the people who are being frightened by the warmunists are also being told by the same people that it’s all the fossil fuel company’s fault. So naturally they wonder why they should be required to pay for something the ultra-rich, greedy fossil fuel corporations are doing.
Next time include questions in the survey if recent buyers of SUVs have remorse for their purchase and if they are aware of policy proposals to punish them for their choices.
The hysteria control knob has been turned up and maybe this advertising has attracted some more people. But they didnt do the poll right. They should have asked, place in order of your concerns the following issues: jobs and income, education, food costs, global warming…. If you did a poll on food costs, energy costs or rental/housing costs and how concerned you are, you probably would have gotten higher positive responses. Moreover, you might be able to answer the question why re reluctance to pay for global warming or any other additional expense.
There was a similar poll carried out in the US, “Key findings about Americans’ belief in god”.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/
I’m not sure if it resulted in a surge of building new places of worship, though.
Given all the support for the proposition the we are destroying our world in the MSM, educational system and government, I am surprised more folks are not sold on the subject.
The same polls showed Brexit failing and Trump working on his golf course business. Yale and George Mason are both centers of climate alarmism. A meaningful poll will not come out of those places. The issue of Climate Change has been so purposefully obfuscated in the public mind that it’s unlikely that an informed opinion can be expressed. We here are more than aware.
Citizens won’t pay for it because they are skeptical. Many people posting here have something to do with that. Proud to express the skeptical opinion whenever the subject comes up. At first people are usually surprised at the bluntness of this view. Then a couple of examples of failed predictions. Then their skeptical bone kicks in.
The thing I love about the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer is that everything he writes is so easy and fun to ridicule.
I looked, but could not find his education level, probably just a BA in english as has Chris Mooney, laughably ignorant clucks.
The fatal flaw in these surveys is that they are biased towards people that are willing to waste their time with such rubbish. A sampling of idiots.
In the UK certainly it does, every time when there is prolonged cold spell.
Renewables and green taxes have pushed heating price to the point where a low income part of population has to choose between food or heating. If it wasn’t for the climate change taxes and surcharges such choice would be a bit more bearable.
If we keep going in the current direction we will all be “low income”
Trump has pushed the pause button for us in the USA. Que the Hallelujah chorus
Cue the Hallelujah chorus.
Que is spanish for “what”.
Queue is a line that you get to stand in.
Fear mongering from the Climate Change Industry fails again to manipulate the American mindset. The average American may virtue signal mildly on a poll but pragmatism (and bloody cold winter temps) drives them to vote ‘No!’ with their hard earned money when it applies to ‘carbon’ taxes.
Because most deep down don’t believe it is a real issue. Years and years of Chicken Little forecasts have been wrong every time and people just tune it out. They still go to the beach and the beaches aren’t under water. The weather is still pretty much the same, it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer. It still snows like it did. Violent weather is down. Hurricanes aren’t more numerous and unless one runs over your head, it is just another news story.
As the next polar vortex comes over the US Great Lakes next week and the temps drop to -20F with wind, the citizens of Chicago and liberal Madison, WI aren’t going to be thinking about global warming.. guaranteed.
Because lefty liberals are always concerned about social problems …… but they definitely want someone else to pay for fixing them.
Most of us were too busy to answer the survey because we were out buying yellow vests and looking into buying interests into yellow vest producers.
The climate hustle machine simply has cranked up the volume of alarmism.
A sure sign the power players behind the scam sense the end in near for their climate hustle.
One last push for socialism and to save the UNFCCC mission of bringing about a new world order on western-style capitalism. Collapsing under its own dishonesty.
The people are not going to allow the socialists to control them. Witness: Trump, Brexit, France’s yellow vest movement. Germany’s Merkel is fading fast — her EnergieWende fantasy is steadily collapsing under reality now in the on-going 2019 harsh winter (https://www.thelocal.de/20190123/warning-over-thin-ice-on-germanys-waterways-as-wintry-weather-continues ). And the cold in the Eastern half of the US is just getting cranked up for this next week of bitter cold there.
It is irresponsible in the extreme for Democrats here in the US (and their socialist political fellow travellers across the world) to tell people that 21st Century’s energy needs of grid reliability and availability (because it is not doable at any price) can be met with solar and wind, while eliminating fossil fuels, without any commensurate large-scale nuclear build out. Yet that is exactly what today’s US Democrats are doing. Today’s Democrats are simply irresponsible and/or simply ignorant tools.
Funny how that works, huh?
Just this week we learned that the % of people who support Medicare drops when told that this means you can’t get private insurance.
Here in Canada, the “experts” told us 9 years ago that we’d have 500,000 electric cars on the road. The actual number (after 9 years)was less than 100,000.
Some governments gave huge incentives.
That was the carrot.
Now PM Zoolander is going to hit us with carbon taxes.
THAT is the stick.
“PM Zoolander” I’ll never think of him without think of that. Very fitting
an interesting list of names:
“The survey instrument was designed by Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, Matthew Ballew, Matthew
Goldberg, and Abel Gustafson of Yale University, and Edward Maibach and John Kotcher of George Mason
University”
color me unsurprised said methods would field such results.
It was designed by the Yale Program on Climate Change
CommunicationPropaganda.The first author is the Director of Yale’s Climate Propaganda program.
Their survey, its “results”, and a packaged message for public release were designed a priori with an intended outcome.
Joseph Goebbels would blush with envy at the slick sophistication in which today’s climate hustlers operate and hide their climate porn behind an academic façade.