Do people care about the climate?
It’s an open question these days, and opinion polls offer little help. Some show that climate ranks fairly low among public concerns, while others indicate a high level of concern among the populace. And in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, now a mere six weeks away, those opinions count for something, particularly in the United States, where lawmakers are looking to be swayed one way or another.
Here’s a sampling of the hodgepodge of public opinion.
• The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press last week reported that “There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem — 35 percent say that today, down from 44 percent in April 2008.”
• The World Wide Views on Global Warming, a global opinion poll released on the same day, reported that “90 percent of U.S. participants say it is urgent to reach a tough, new agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December and not punt to subsequent meetings,” and that “69 percent believe the price of fossil fuels should be increased.”
It’s not just Americans who seem to be schizophrenic on this topic. Polls from Canada, Australia, Japan, Egypt — you name it — all seem to have conflicting results. Much of this, of course, depends on exactly what questions were asked, and by whom: the pollsters’ agendas, when they have them, can steer answers in a certain direction. I’m not suggesting that Pew and the World Wide Views folks have done this. I’m just saying.
It’s in this context that I recently spoke with my friend Cara Pike. Pike heads the Social Capital Project, a project spun out of the nonprofit Earthjustice, aimed at “building the base of public support for environmental protection.” Pike — whose meaty and insightful “Ecological Roadmap” of Americans’ environmental attitudes is the appendix of my book, Strategies for the Green Economy — has for years been combining research tools and storytelling techniques to build some of the most important national environmental campaigns of the past decade.
Pike’s latest effort is a new report, Climate Crossroads: A Research-Based Framing Guide for Global Warming Advocates to Global Warming Advocates. The report (available for download from GreenBiz.com), is described as:
“…a first step towards a unified conversation on global warming. It is a summary of what is known to date about the most effective communications approaches, developed by drawing on more than 25 advocacy organizations’ experiences in the field, the body of research they built over the years, and new research conducted specifically for this project. This document identifies the ideas and values that will lead to public support for global warming advocates’ shared objectives over the long term, and suggests ways to bridge from specific policy concerns to the broader, shared narrative.”
The idea, says Pike, is to create a “Common Message Platform” that will provide organizations with “a shared set of key points and perspectives that will lead to both more effective communications on their own particular issues, and a more engaged and constructive national conversation on the topic with sympathetic groups.”
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