by Skyler Berardi
This is the third post in our series on the consequences of outside influences on the performance and communication of science.
This November, National Geographic uploaded a post on Instagram titled, “Climate change could impact where we live. Are these cities ready?” I had already been researching public attitudes towards climate change for this article, so I was curious to see what discourse was happening in the comments section. I scrolled and found an all-too-familiar debate. A handful of folks were posting in support of climate change action, including one person who penned, “to protect Earth is a burning topic and must be focused upon.” Then, there were the dissenters:
“Climate change is not real! It’s all government conspiracies trying to control us.”
“Climate changes. Been doing so for 4 billion years.”
“The elites of the world buying up all the oceanfront property say otherwise.”
And, put simply by one user,
“Propaganda.”
Of course, these comments likely represent more extreme opinions than those belonging to the general public. However, a survey conducted in October 2023 indicated that only 24% of Americans believe scientists understand the causes of climate change “very well”, and an even smaller fraction (13%) believe scientists understand the best ways to address it. Perhaps most strikingly, 31% of Americans surveyed felt that scientists do not have a good idea of whether climate change is even occurring at all. These results should be surprising, as there is overwhelming scientific consensus for climate change (1) existing, (2) being driven by human actions, and (3) being a threat that requires policy shifts. How can public opinion be so variable around an issue that is widely considered to be well-understood by the scientific community? Here, I explored this phenomenon by examining which factors appear to have the greatest influence on whether individuals believe in climate change science, and whether they are in support of policies designed to mitigate climate change risk.
The emergence of climate science and early public attitudes
Scientists only learned that greenhouse gas emissions were capable of altering the global climate over the last century. In 1938, G. S. Callendar reported that an increase of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations was capable of raising global temperatures, and he identified that the combustion of fossil fuels was releasing one such gas into our atmosphere in large quantities: carbon dioxide. These findings were followed by perhaps the biggest breakthrough in early climate science: the measurements of carbon dioxide levels from Mauna Loa in Hawaii by Charles David Keeling, beginning in 1958. Known as the Keeling Curve, this work represents the longest-running measurement of atmospheric CO2 and has provided conclusive evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is causing a consistent rise in carbon dioxide levels. Keeling’s work was followed by numerous studies that further confirmed his findings (more reading on this here). As scientists began to accept that humans were responsible for driving climate change towards the end of the 20th century, the public was also starting to learn about the phenomenon. Studies show that awareness of climate change increased throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and the public generally understood that scientists viewed it as an environmental risk. However, the reported level of knowledge around climate change was often limited: evidence suggests that many individuals conflated climate change with ozone depletion, and also lacked awareness of the causal role of fossil fuel emissions.
Public opinion in the 21st century
A comprehensive review of survey data indicated that public concern for climate change reached an apex in the early 2000s, which may be associated with increased media and political attention given to the rapidly growing body of scientific evidence for anthropogenic causes of climate change. By 2004, 71% of Americans supported U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol – which became effective in February, 2005, and aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and this was indicative of broad public support for climate action. The 2006 release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth contributed to the wave of growing public awareness of climate change risks, and watching the documentary as a ten-year-old was my earliest memory of learning about climate change. It was also the first time in my life where I felt concerned about the future after finishing a movie, and many others shared this unease. One study suggested that viewing An Inconvenient Truth may have temporarily inspired concrete actions to mitigate climate change risks: data showed that people living near theaters where the documentary was screened purchased 50% more voluntary carbon offsets during the first two months following the screening, relative to their purchases made prior to the screening.
However, attitudes towards climate change looked quite different by the end of the decade. One survey indicated that only 57% of Americans believed that “there is solid evidence that the earth is warming” in 2009, which had decreased from 71% in 2008. Additionally, only 35% of Americans in 2009 viewed climate change as a “serious problem”, compared to 44% in 2008. These findings were echoed in numerous other studies, which tended to point to increased political polarization as well as the start of the Great Recession as possible drivers of the trend (reviewed here). Following the turbulence of the late 2010s, public concern towards climate change generally rose and stabilized. As of June 2023, a majority of U.S. adults (67%) supported prioritizing the development of renewable energy to mitigate climate change risk, representing both an acknowledgement of fossil fuels contributing to climate change and a willingness to support policy interventions. However, this finding was stratified across political lines, in which roughly 90% of Democrat-leaning respondents supported the development of renewable energy sources in contrast to 42% of Republican-leaning respondents. Additionally, 78% of Democrats reported viewing climate change as a major threat to the country, up from 58% in 2013. In comparison, only 23% of Republicans viewed climate change as a major threat in 2023, and that figure has hardly moved over the last decade (22% in 2013). Therefore, while climate change action has reached majority support in the U.S., divides in public attitudes still remain – especially across political lines.
What factors influence attitudes towards climate change risk?
There are many answers to this question. One review (Weber 2010) outlines the factors that affect public understanding of climate change by grouping them into two broad categories. Weber found that people form their opinions on this topic based on a combination of (a) their lived experiences and perceptions of weather and climate events, and (b) scientific communication about climate change that may be filtered through the media and other actors (e.g., educators or politicians). The former influence can raise issues, as it is difficult for individuals to differentiate between weather and climate, and assumptions about anomalous weather events can be inaccurately conflated with the true effects of climate change. Aside from these potential biases in observation, individuals living in different regions of the world will experience unequal effects of climate change. This can result in people who live in a region that has been less affected to have trouble understanding the consequences of climate change elsewhere in the world, or imagining future consequences to themselves (more on this here).
The challenge of directly observing climate change results in many people absorbing information about climate change via the media and other sources that communicate the findings of scientists. These sources, of course, can also be biased or inaccurate. In one particularly telling study, researchers examined the politicization of media reports regarding climate change in major U.S. newspapers from 1985 to 2017. They found that climate change articles showed increased politicization beginning in the 2000s, which was evidenced by a rising proportion of articles featuring statements from politicians, relative to a decreased proportion of statements from climate change experts. Additionally, differences in Democrat and Republican rhetoric became increasingly polarized over time, which coincided with trends in public attitudes across party lines. This suggests that the public was adhering to the positions stated by political elites, and that there was decreased availability of direct reports from scientists for the public to digest. Whether or not individuals trust climate change experts, the government, and the media also likely play a role in shaping their takeaways from reports on climate change.
Climate change vs. two disasters: the Great Recession and COVID-19
One of the most interesting influences on climate change attitudes I uncovered during my research was the indirect effect of other world events on the public’s prioritization of policies that mitigate climate change risks. Brulle et al. (2012) examined the shift in public opinion between the early and late 2000s, and the authors identified the primary factors that influenced the decrease in concern for climate change. One factor that exerted a strong effect on climate change attitudes was the status of the economy, as the Great Recession coincided with the end of the decade. The recession’s impact on climate change concern may be explained by a behavioral concept also proposed by Weber, called the “finite pool of worry” (2006, 2010). This hypothesis predicts that humans have a set level of emotional energy that can be distributed across threats and challenges. The mental resources we expend on “worrying” may primarily be focused on whichever issue feels the most dire, resulting in a reduced level of worry for other issues. Brulle et al. found evidence that suggested concern for climate change in the late 2000s receded partially due to the recession, as the public was more focused on whether the government would enact policies to reduce unemployment and foster economic growth. Additionally, the media provided frequent coverage on the state of the economy, which likely reduced the amount of public attention being paid to reports about climate change.
So, if the Great Recession led to a reduction in concern for climate change, would other world events do the same? Researchers tested this theory by examining climate change attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic. They predicted that people would devote less emotional energy to climate change during the pandemic according to the “finite pool of worry” hypothesis. From 2019 to 2021, the researchers probed both the quantity and content of discussions about climate change on Twitter, and they assigned an emotional sentiment to each tweet based on the poster’s language choices. They found that there was a reduction in the number of climate change tweets upon the onset of the pandemic, and as COVID-19 deaths increased, people posted less climate change tweets that contained “negative sentiments” related to worry and anxiety.
While this study suggests that the “finite pool of worry” hypothesis may have impacted public discourse about climate change during the pandemic, other studies indicate that attitudes towards climate change did not actually decrease. In a large international survey, respondents reported feeling increased levels of concern for climate change during COVID, and they tended to support green economic recovery policies. This may partially be due to the public viewing coronavirus spread as an issue related to interactions between humans and the environment, aligning it with other climate change risks. Worldwide social media use also increased during the pandemic, which could be another factor that distinguished these results from the Recession era: users in 2020 may have been interacting with climate change content more frequently online. I downloaded TikTok for the first time during COVID, and my algorithm has directed me to several educational videos about climate change over the last few years (featuring fiery comments sections galore). However, not all individuals surveyed in this study reported increased concern for climate change action. The researchers found that people who had experienced income loss and job instability during the pandemic were less likely to want to prioritize green recovery policies, which is a result more reminiscent of attitudes during the Great Recession. This suggests that individuals facing hardships during the pandemic worried less about issues that did not pose an immediate threat to their livelihood, like climate change.
Conclusions
Scientific research doesn’t happen in a bubble. Novel findings are filtered through our cultures, politics, religions, economies, media sources, lived experiences, and so on, before the information is digested by the public. This means that communities with varying interests and priorities may view scientific discoveries through distinct societal lenses, and this can actively shape their opinions. Some scientific findings become more controversial than others. In the case of climate change, external factors including politics, media coverage, and broader world events have led to divided levels of concern. Unfortunately, public attitudes can have a substantial effect on whether policies designed to mitigate risks are effective, and it is important to improve public understanding and support for policies that reduce the dangers of climate change. Providing better education around the causes and consequences of climate change is essential, as well as transparently communicating the future benefits of policy actions. This is especially true if policy interventions include tradeoffs that may feel disruptive on an individual level, such as asking people to make behavioral shifts like taking public transit more frequently to reduce emissions (more perspectives on the factors that influence support for climate change policies here and here).
Achieving widespread public support for swift and decisive policy interventions will be difficult, but it is essential for reducing the risks of climate change. The voices of scientists need to be heard more frequently in the media, and political elites should use their influence to echo the advice being offered by scientists and policymakers – not to detract from it. Otherwise, climate change will slowly march on to the tune of, “Propaganda! It isn’t real!” Then, one day in the future, we won’t need scientists to warn us that climate change is happening. We will all have our own very real, and very personal experiences with the environmental crisis.