 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and I am so glad that you are here to join us this afternoon for our briefing on public attitudes about climate change and clean energy. I think this comes at a very propitious moment in our history, particularly as we are acutely aware of all of the attention that climate has been receiving in the last few weeks and with the ratification of the climate, the Paris Climate Agreement that has happened just this last week by reaching two thresholds that were critical for the ability of that agreement to enter into force. Those two thresholds were that more than 55 countries representing more than 55 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Needed to deposit their instruments of ratification with the United Nations. That has occurred. This is a record setting achievement for an international agreement, meaning that that Paris Climate Agreement will enter into force in November. So this is a very, very important time in terms of thinking about how the world is perceiving climate change and the urgency with which it needs to be addressed. And of course, dealing with that comes all sorts of issues in terms of thinking about what affects climate change, what are the roles of energy, how do we deal with other issues that have been raised by so many practitioners around the world, including how do we become more resilient in terms of our communities, how do we deal with adaptation? As we see more and more things happen that are are related to extreme weather events and the list goes on and on. At the same time, it's really important from a policy perspective and from a policymaker perspective and indeed to think about what what are the attitudes, what are the views, how is this issue in and it's related components being received, being perceived by people across the country, by the American public. And so we are delighted this afternoon to have someone who is spending so much of his time trying to help us all better understand public attitudes with regard to climate change and clean energy with us this afternoon. So we will be hearing from Professor Ed Maybach, who is Dr. Maybach is the how do I want to say this? He is a distinguished university professor at George Mason University. He is also the founding director of the George Mason University Center of Climate Change Communication. His research, as I mentioned, focuses on public understanding of climate change. He also during the three-year period of 2011 through 14 was the co-chair of the engagement and communication working group for the third national climate assessment. And he is engaged in working with many different groups and other universities including Yale, Yale's polling and public opinion school with regard to various climate change public engagement and public understanding. So at this time I am very honored to turn the podium over to Dr. Ed Maybach. Thank you Carol and thank you all for coming this afternoon to share a few minutes with me. I realize you it's a slow day here at the Capitol but you all have good things to do, good ways to spend your time so I'm going to try to make sure this was one of the best ways you could spend that time. I'm going to share a little bit about what we know, what we've been learning from our polling projects but I want to start by acknowledging that with regard to climate change and clean energy there are a lot of matters of opinion and we are all entitled to our own opinion but there are also certain matters of fact and it isn't helpful when in a democracy people hold different sets of facts. So all of the polling work that we do begins with some common facts most sort of most basically this first and most important finding from the national climate assessment which essentially says that human cause climate change is happening, its impacts are being felt around the United States and the human attribute or the human causality the fingerprint associated with climate change is as a result of the burning of primarily as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. So that sort of is at the most simple level the basis in fact. Lots of opinions about those facts, lots of facts about opinions about what we should do about these facts but that's what we try to get at through our polling work. So when I use a plural pronoun hour I'm talking about my team at Yale and George Mason University. It's a large group that has changed over time. I'm going to be sharing data that we've been collecting since 2008 so that the team of people has changed over time but do want to acknowledge that this what I'll be sharing with you comes exclusively from the Yale and Mason polling group. Everything that I believe that everything I'm going to share is more or less consistent with what other polling teams both in the commercial sector as well as in the academic sector are finding. So I'm not going to sort of show you any one offs that don't have the basis in confirmation of other teams. So I'm going to make three points today. The first point is that the good news is that most Americans are convinced that global warming is real but then they're shortly thereafter followed a whole bunch of caveats. So the good news is heavily caveated. The second point is also good news and that is if I'm reading our data correctly the times they are a change in public opinion, public understanding of climate change is in a fairly dynamic period of flux right now. Whether or not it's a long-term trend versus just a blip we won't yet know. Time will tell. And then the third point that I'd like to make is that public support this is something of a paradox but public support for clean energy and climate action actually outpaces public understanding of climate change is a risk. So even though much of what I'm going to share with you shows that the public has a very weak understanding of the extent of the risk they have a very strong sense of the fact that we ought to be taking action. And the reasons for doing so as I'll show you in a few minutes go beyond simply our feelings and our concern about climate change and get to some other more fundamental beliefs. So the first point most Americans are convinced that climate change is happening. This is the data that I would put up to support that. Seven out of ten Americans think that global warming is happening. There's been a bit of waxing and waning over the past decade in that belief. I could sort of tell you why I think there has been waxing and waning at different points over the past decade. It doesn't really it's not all that important. I will however say that I think that all while we're at the high watermark of public understanding currently where we are meeting once again meeting the high watermark that we first saw in in 2008 when we began our polling project. My sense is that public attitudes public opinions are more stable now than they were in 2008. In other words I don't expect to see this degree of waxing and waning going forward. So an important the first important caveat that you have to understand about the fact that 70 percent of the public is convinced that climate change is real is that many members of the public are uncertain. They don't only four out of ten are either very or extremely certain that global warming is happening. About one out of 20 less than one out of 10 at least are very sure that global warming is not happening which means that the remaining 50 percent have are only somewhat certain of their views or they don't have views at all. They tell us they don't know their answer to this question is I don't know. So that means half of America has relatively weak views on this issue. While seven out of ten people are convinced only five out of ten are convinced that human that the climate change is human caused. So we lose a substantial proportion of Americans who are paying enough attention to be convinced that it's real but are not paying enough attention or are not convinced by what evidence is put in front of them that climate change is being caused by human action. While the vast majority of climate scientists somewhere between 97 and 99 percent depending on how you how you study the experts opinions about climate change the vast majority of climate scientists are convinced that human cause climate change is happening except unfortunately only about one out of ten Americans understands that there is a consensus a scientific consensus among the experts about human caused climate change that 10 percent is the one group over here on your right 11 percent actually. The most common answer to our question is you know what what do you think how much what proportion of climate scientists are convinced that human caused climate change is happening. The most common answer is I don't know. So that's about one out of three people. And as you can see there's a fairly consistent distribution all the way down to less than 50 percent. This is not an accident. This is this is the product of a very smart very sustained strategic communication campaign to convince Americans that there is a lot of disagreement among the experts. And as it turns out as I will show you momentarily it was a very smart campaign because this belief is really fundamental in public understanding of human caused climate change because climate change is complicated and if we think the experts aren't convinced why should we be convinced. Most Americans see global warming not in the way that the National Climate Assessment has talked about it not as climate change is a here and now problem that is having impacts across America today but they see it as a distant threat. It's distant in space so they see it as primarily happening somewhere else not here that and that somewhere else that is light up is for most people somewhere beyond America's borders. It's seen as distant in time. It's a it's a future problem. It's not today's problem and it's seen as distant in in terms of species. It's seen largely as harming plants penguins and polar bears and ice not so much in terms of it harming people. So this there's this really significant psychological distance that most Americans experience when they think about climate change. The majority of Americans 58 percent currently tell us they're worried about climate change but only of those only 16 percent say they're very worried about it. So that means they're worried about it in a I believe it means they're worried about it in an abstract sense as a as a problem that will have to be dealt with but it's not a pressing problem. It's not today's problem. It's not on my top priority list of problems. The fact that 16 percent of the public and you'll I think you'll understand who that 16 percent is in a few minutes when I show you the distribution of the six global warming six Americas that that really is the 16 percent who are very worried about it. For all other Americans it's a much lesser worry. Now this slide is really hard to read even if it's in front of you much less if you're away from it. So let me walk you through it. We ask a question that tries to get at people's sense of what is the most likely outcome. Are we as a people going to rally to deal with this problem or we as the president likes to say we're going to kick the can down the road. So we ask the question which which of the following statements comes closest to your view. I'm going to walk you up the slide with the response categories. So from least prevalent answers to the most prevalent answer the least prevalent answer is that humans can reduce global warming and we're going to do so successfully. In other words we've got this and it's only one out of 20 Americans who believe that this is something that is not only within our capability but we're going to do this. That's a little bit distressing at a whole lot of different levels. The next most common response is that global warming isn't happening. That's about 8 percent. Next most common is that humans can't reduce global warming even if it is happening. It's sort of a more lukewarm version of doubting that climate change is our problem. The next most common response held by a quarter of our respondents is that humans could reduce global warming but people aren't willing to change their behavior so we're not going to. An overtly fatalistic point of view and the most common response almost half the public says that humans can reduce could reduce global warming but it's unclear at this point whether we're going to do what's necessary. In other words the jury is still out. That is not an unreasonable point of view. It's not a great it's not an optimistic point of view and the sense that if this is a problem that our nation should be addressing we want more people to feel like we've got this and I'm going to roll up my sleeves and be part of the solution. Yet this isn't this is where we are today. Fewer than four out of ten Americans think that the American people can convince our Congress to pass ambitious legislation to reduce global warming. If our Congress is here to do the will of the people one would expect one might expect it to be a higher proportion of Americans who think that they can convince Congress to do their will. In in terms of sort of psychological jargon this is called collective efficacy. I would suggest that we as the American people have relatively low sense of collective efficacy that we are able to convince the decision makers to do the right thing. The next couple of slides actually come from a report that we released last week in that report we called the question is there a climate spiral of silence in America and our preliminary answer is yes it looks like there is. We know from our polling data that that two out of three people tell us they're interested in in this issue. They want to learn more about this issue. Also two out of three Americans tell us that they are that they find this issue to be personally relevant. So essentially you get concurrence between those two numbers about two out of three of us think this is a relevant issue both in general as well as personally yet unfortunately fewer than half of Americans tell us that they're hearing about this issue in the media and by in the media I mean in the news television newspapers digital and in entertainment media so it's really it is absolutely manifestly true this is not my research but other people like me do research tracking media coverage of climate change media coverage of climate change hit the high watermark in 2007 around the time when Mr. Gore and the IPCC won their Nobel Prize for addressing for their work to address climate change the coverage of climate change has plummeted quite dramatically after that so in the intervening years there was like 75 percent less coverage in newspapers around the nation 80 percent less coverage on the nightly news it has bounced back some but it's still considerably less than what it was at in 2007 all of that not withstanding I think there's still something going on here where the public is not noticing what coverage of climate change is actually going on in in the media but more concerning to me because of this notion of a climate silence is that less than two out of ten Americans hear people that they know talking about this issue once a month or more frequently two out of ten people that means for the other eight out of ten of us we hear about it less than once a month most people four out of ten actually hear about it once a year at most and and finally only three out of ten Americans tell us that they discuss global warming with their friends and family the people who it is most okay to have uncomfortable conversations with so the reason we're concerned about the climate silence and the reason we think actions probably ought to be taken to try to stimulate more conversation about climate change in America is because issues the prominence the salience of issues is sort of directly proportional to how much attention it gets out there in the public dialogue if people aren't hearing it if they're not hearing those conversations in the media in their converse in conversations among people they know and if they're not participating in those conversations it tends to reinforce the belief that this while this is indeed a problem it's tomorrow's problem or next year's problem it isn't really today's problem so that was the good news with all the caveats what comes next is what I hope is unvarnished good news no caveats needed but as I said these are what I'm about to show you are sort of changes that we've seen over the past two years so it's it's possible this is the beginning of a trend or a variety of different trends it's also possible that this is what pollsters might call a blip a temporary fluctuation up and it might come back down so the most basic question we ask in our surveys is whether or not you believe our respondents believe that global warming is happening we've seen a fairly large increase in among everybody in that over the past two years but the most important increase that we've seen is the one here on the extreme right hand side of the slide we've seen that among conservative republicans there has been a 19 percentage point increase in the proportion who say global warming is happening in the public opinion polling business a 19 percent change in two years is really quite large so we I'm I'm hopeful that this is the beginning of a long-term and sustained trend but perhaps too soon to say one and a perception that we have been tracking for a long time now since our first survey is whether or not people believe that americans are being harmed already as a result of global warming and as you can see we're we're now at the new high watermark only it's still only more about slightly more than one out of three but that is a sort of the product of a long-term gradual increase there are lots of good organizations who are working very hard to communicate the fact that americans are being harmed by climate change already but it's only slowly beginning to sink in last a year ago last summer june 18th but unfortunately the day after dylan roof murdered many people in the church in south carolina the pope released his encyclical on global warming called the dot o c it's a very very powerful statement that opens up a new lens a new a new window on the problem of climate change the pope talked about climate change primarily as a moral issue an issue that is moral as a result of the fact that the people around the world who have benefited most from the fossil fuel era are least likely to be harmed by global warming and the people who have been harmed least by the fossil fuel era are being hurt first and worst by global warming so he fundamentally asked people of faith around the world to see this as the issue that it is a moral issue and and respond to that by taking appropriate action the reason why we think that was such an important event in terms of beginning to end the climate silence potentially begin to start a new kind of conversation in america is because americans do see understand global warming as a variety of different kinds of issues but we mostly see it as an environmental issue which by default means it's an issue that many americans don't really think is their issue we see it secondarily as a scientific issue scientific issues are interesting to those of us who are science nerds but for most people it's not terribly engaging we do are beginning to see it more as a food issue an agricultural issue and that's really good because it certainly is that we're beginning to see it as a weather issue and a severe weather issue and to a much greater lesser degree we're beginning to understand it as a health issue but very few americans currently this is actually our most recent data very few americans even today see it as a moral issue a poverty issue or a social justice issue and those are precisely the types of issues that that pope francis taught us or spoke about in in his teachings these the next two slides are a little bit difficult to to follow i'll simply say that we surveyed a a random group of americans between spring and fall of 2015 we did so specifically to assess the impact that that pope francis's encyclical was going to have we anticipated we would see the biggest impact on catholics and a lesser impact on other americans in fact we saw a fairly substantial impact on catholics but we also saw a fairly substantial impact on americans overall and in some cases the impact on catholics understanding of climate change really was no greater than than the all of us the ways sort of three ways that i'd like to just briefly characterize three impacts that we call the francis effect it really did his teachings really did begin to increase people's understanding of global warming as a moral issue a social justice or fairness issue and even though he didn't really frame it in these terms a spiritual and a religious issue um his teachings had a significant impact on helping americans understand that the world's poor were going to be hurt first and worst which is why it is a moral issue and then oh i'm sorry and that was it i pulled a slide um so the point being and the reason why i think this is this warrants comment in the times they are a change in because while the pope i'm not sure the pope has finished his portion of the conversation about climate change i can tell you that the american catholic church his emissaries here in the united states are working very hard to continue that conversation in catholic churches around the country lots of other faith denominations are also looking to start or continue that conversation in lots of churches and synagogues around the country so this is an important new voice that that previously really had not been nearly as active as they are becoming so the last point i wanted to to flag for you that i think is positive is that we know that three out of ten americans tell us that they'd be willing to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming what exactly people think that means we don't know um we uh we wrote the question to essentially ask would you be willing to link arms with fellow citizens and and try to make your concerns understood by our elected officials by our business officials etc um three out of ten let's just say that's about 90 million americans um i can tell you that the the membership of all the environmental groups in america combined does not add up to 90 million so the reason why i think this is quite a positive sign is that there are a lot of americans out there who tell us they care enough to get involved they just aren't involved yet um philanthropy researchers when they survey people and ask people why they didn't help um the most common answer across lots and lots and lots of studies is because they say nobody asked me to help so i see a lot of opportunity to ask 90 million americans to help so let me move to the third and final point that i wanted to make which is um as i called it a paradox the fact that their public support for climate action and moving forward with a uh sort of pivoting away from fossil fuels and and and heading directly into the clean energy era is a lot stronger than public understanding of climate change for me this is an incredibly revealing slide um it shows that that most americans uh most this is voters this is not all members of the public but most american voters want corporations congress local state and local government officials and citizens themselves to do more to address global warming and if you look across the rows so you can see that that corporations in industry we particularly expect them to step up um and by we i mean democrats independents and republicans um we expect citizens themselves to step up um and again you still see the majority of the large majority of democrats uh independents and a small majority of republicans um and with the exception of republicans we expect us congress to step up our member of congress to step up our governors our local officials um to step up to the plate and that's a really interesting insight as far as i'm concerned um it's not that we expect one sector of our society to respond we expect all sectors of our society to respond um and i think the implication of this is that for those of you who are trying to mobilize support for policy responses don't forget that the public feels even more strongly about corporate responses and about citizenry responses so if you're too narrow minded in terms of the kind of response you're looking to promote um you may well be losing some of the enthusiasm that members of the public have for the fact that we need to see lots of actors in our society step up so why is that or why might that be um more than half of americans tell us um in response to our question that if our nation takes steps to reduce global warming what will happen a fairly large majority of americans say it will create a better life for our children and grandchildren and almost no one says it won't do that a significant majority says it will improve our health and almost no one says it won't do that so those are two really strong manifest goods that the public that we all care about a lot leaving a legacy creating a better life for our children and grandchildren improving conditions so that we our children our parents all of us can live more healthfully today those are really strong reasons for dealing with this problem and those are reasons that the public already embraces they already see those things as happening if we take if we respond to this problem um i'd point your attention about halfway down to the fact that about half of our respondents say um responding to global warming will cause energy prices to rise so that's about half think that's true very few think that isn't true about 11 percent um and i would suggest that's really a matter of um that is a outdated understanding i am not an economist i'm not prepared to make an economic argument to you but i'm really impressed at how quickly the economics of clean energy are changing um even without a price on emitting heat trapping pollution in the atmosphere so um it's really important that most americans think that with the good will come some bad and if that isn't true if those economics are based on outdated assumptions i think we have an opportunity to set the record straight on that important point so i don't want to mislead you into thinking that anybody makes global warming their top tier voting issue liberal democrats it gets pretty close to the top tier it's it's number six um moderate and conservative democrats it's it's number 13 as a voting issue um for moderate republicans it's way down there at number 21 and for conservative republicans it's it's dead last which probably means if we had more items on the list it would still drop to dead last so let's be clear this isn't a top tier voting issue for very many americans that notwithstanding and we have looked at this on three different surveys now our three most recent surveys what we find when we ask people the following question if a candidate for us president strongly supports taking climate action to reduce global warming would you be more or less likely to vote for that candidate and what we find is that by a three to one margin americans tell voters american voters tell us yes i'd be more likely to vote for that candidate who supports strong action on climate change and then we turn the question around 180 degrees and we say would you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who opposes action on climate change and by a four to one margin people tell us they'd be less likely to vote for such a candidate i don't know to what degree this has bearing on the current presidential election but i do have a growing sense that this does have bearing in our elections going forward the fact that by you know three to four four to one margin people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with candidates who aren't willing to step up and do more so the law of the land right now even if it is sort of in abeyance is the clean power plan we do we assume that very few americans have heard of the clean power plan so we do our best to write a simple plain language description of it we say how much do you support or oppose the following policy setting strict carbon dioxide emission limits on existing coal fire power plants to reduce global warming and improve public health power plants would have to reduce their emissions and or invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency the cost of electricity to consumers and companies would likely increase so you see that even us in our polling questions we have some possibly outdated economic assumptions but that notwithstanding this is the degree to which the public supports the clean power plan stated in simple terms 70 percent of all of us do um 91 percent of liberal democrats 85 percent of moderate democrats 67 percent of moderate republicans it's really a surprising level of support for the fundamental proposition that is embodied in the clean power plan um and and hopefully this is now irrelevant um as carol said the the paris agreement has now been put in force um but that notwithstanding most americans feel we should be taking these actions regardless of what other nations do which is a really strong statement um i so often hear the reason we shouldn't be responding to climate change is because india and china won't and thus that would mean if we did we'd just be the suckers who were putting our cash on the table um in reality that has now been shown not to be true but even if it were true we know that a majority of americans feel like we should be doing the right thing regardless this is my final policy slide um it's a little bit dense but let's just take a look at the numbers these policies as as from top to bottom so we ask people um how much would they support or oppose funding more research into renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power and you can see that across the political spectrum we get strong strong support for federal r&d into clean energy um support for providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy efficient vehicles or solar panels so helping ordinary people and presumably companies um take the steps that are available to them today again you see strong support up to and including conservative republicans for that proposition regulating carbon dioxide the primary greenhouse greenhouse gas as a pollutant um you even see the majority of conservative republicans in support of that it is a slim majority um and after that things fall down just a bit but i'll just point you to the next one uh in the list requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and use the money to reduce other taxes by an equal amount revenue neutral carbon tax um as you can see all the way through moderate republicans you get strong support we we lose conservative republicans from that proposition just a word about that i sort of prefaced earlier um we've in our survey work we've identified six distinct views out there among in the public about global warming we call the people who hold those views global warming six americas um on one end you get the alarmed six i said 16 percent of americans are very worried about global warming and 17 percent are alarmed so it's the alarmed who are very worried on the other end of this continuum you have a sort of an equal and opposite group we call them the dismissive about 10 percent currently um and and shrinking somewhat over the past few years um they feel very strongly that this issue isn't real if it is real it isn't human caused and even if it is human caused it's certainly not serious and does not warrant a public response if you are a campaigner a climate campaigner on either side of this issue you're almost certainly going after one of these two audiences these are the two groups of people who are going to be willing to take action if you are trying to help americans understand this issue better under the assumption that this is real this is serious um and all of us have decisions to make whether those are personal decisions about how we run our lives or public decisions about the the people we put in elected office or the policies that they promulgate we have important decisions to make and these are the people that we need to reach in order to help them understand climate change in a manner that is more consistent with the the actual climate silence science in our research we found that lots of different beliefs are associated with various appropriate what i call appropriate attitudes and behaviors those appropriate attitudes i realize i'm making a value judgment here but with that stated clearly um i think as it is appropriate to have the attitude that we should be responding as a society to this problem i think it's appropriate to to support specific policies that will help us deal with the problem and i think appropriate behaviors there are sort of two broad categories we can we can use our voice as citizens by engaging with our elected officials um we can use our voice as consumers by choosing how to spend our money with whom and where to spend our money i think all of these are appropriate responses we find that there's at least five key beliefs that are strong predictors of all three categories of response it's pretty simple americans who understand that climate change is real that it's human caused that it's bad for people not just plants penguins and polar bears um and that there's hope this is solvable this is something we can do something about those are four very strong predictors of people who hold these attitudes and who are taking these actions and there's one other very strong belief we we have come to call this a gateway belief because we now understand this to be the most fundamental of all beliefs about climate change that there is in fact a consensus among the experts that human caused climate change is happening americans who have been deceived into thinking otherwise tend not to believe in these other four statements these other four ideas that global warming is real human cause bad force and solvable so if you will i see these as five simple messages that have the potential to help those four americas in the middle of the continuum um evolve over time to become more like the alarmed um and the reason why it's so important um from me as a communication scientist the reason why it's so important for me to identify simple beliefs that are important predictors of appropriate attitudes and actions is because simple beliefs are easily turned into simple messages and simple messages repeated often by a variety of trusted sources is what begins to shape public understanding over time my core training and for 25 years i worked exclusively in the field of public health i still am working in the field of public health i'm just working on a different public health threat um but this is something that we've really learned very clearly in the public health field over the past 50 years we have helped to solve important whole range of important public health threats in america and around the world by using that formula simple clear messages repeated often by a variety of trusted voices um i would contend that that fundamentally is our opportunity here so i urge you to all if you are not currently receiving our reports i urge you to come to our website click on the receive our reports link um you'll automatically get our work as we publish it um two final thoughts one i know i'm i'm bad i should slap my own wrist for forgetting to do this all of that public understanding data that i showed you at the national level that's thanks to my colleagues at Yale we have they have put up 14 different indicators of public opinion at the state level and at the congressional district level for every congressional district in america so if you are interested in what your constituents think about these issues um go it's called the Yale climate opinion maps just google that it will take you right to this incredible interactive mapping tool and you can see where your constituents fall out on 14 different indicators um and then lastly i promised uh in the in as a as a way to try to get you here um i made clear that we're about to do our our fall survey the major focus of our upcoming survey will be policy support for a range of different climate and clean energy actions we are wide open to including policies that you think are promising that you would like to see move forward on on capitol hill or in state houses around the country so my offer to you made in the flyer but but i'm here today to now make good on that offer is i want to hear your thoughts about the policies that we should assess public support for so that's it i now um we don't unfortunately have a microphone to pass around to you so carol perhaps you'd be willing to uh sort of moderate the conversation well let's just open it up for your questions and if you could identify your and uh well we'll proceed okay um okay so we'll start we'll start in the back there was so i thought there was a hand back there so okay back here okay we'll start over here um they don't know how to take action and they feel helpless or um incident and do you have any thoughts about communicating that piece of and addressing that piece of the puzzle and or do you look at anything like community social marketing or i know that's a lot okay we got it okay okay so just just to be safe for the uh the webcast the question was um lots of people care many people aren't taking action they may feel impotent they may feel there are no good actions for them to take what we have learned in our polling research and and other forms of research is that that the alarm segment so that's 16 percent of the public um they are all taking action most of them are taking action as consumers in other words they're they're rewarding certain companies that they think are aligning with behind solutions and they're punishing other companies by not you know patronizing them because they think those companies are are the problem um so almost a hundred percent of the alarm are taking action as consumers only slightly more than one out of four somewhere between 25 and 30 percent are taking actions as citizens so i there's in other words there's a fundamental disconnect between the kinds of actions that people take to express their will about a better future um i think people take action are are more likely to take action as a citizen because they know what to do that's easy it's sort of a natural byproduct of act decisions they're making on a daily basis most americans don't know how to express themselves as a citizen and they feel impotent that even if they were to do so their elected officials wouldn't care one way or the other when i come to to offices here on capitol hill and i have a chance to speak with staff and members i hear the exact opposite i hear how important it is to hear what constituents want the members to do so it's a really curious disconnect between public understanding about their options to take action um and what they actually end up doing not to be um more good but how do you think that's going to change the opinions about climate change through natural demographic changes so let me start with good news um my colleague karen ackerloff is in the audience she's doing a year here on the hill in senator sanders office um and she released a report of um a large survey that she conducted over the past year or past summer in maryland um and what she found in maryland um is comported with what many people in many organizations think is the case millennials care more about the issue than do their parents and their grandparents and the differences were pretty pretty large in our national data we have looked at this a number of different times starting all the way back in in the um in 2008 2009 um and as recently as this year until this year we didn't see any difference by age group out there among american adults in other words millennials don't care or in our surveys they don't care more than their parents and their grandparents the one exception that we found and only in our most recent survey which was done in the spring is that republican millennials now show that they are their answers indicate that they are that they do care more than their parents and their grandparents again this is one survey one one political demographic in one survey you know this could be a promising sign it could just be a um a little erroneous blip in in our data but karen's findings are we're very very clear whether or not um perhaps maryland is going to be a a bell weather for the rest of america we marylanders can can always hope so i'm sorry um yes women care more about this issue than do men um but but before you feel too self-satisfied um they only care a little bit more um of course we've all heard about the angry white male phenomenon so the dismissive segment in our six americas they are phenomenally angry white males um but since they're only 10 of america it it means that the other groups that the gender distinction the gender um gradient isn't all that large but we we rep the photos we use to represent these groups um are not an accident um the alarmed and the concerned are represented as women because more women are in the alarmed and the concerned segment yes sir and i want to go to your point that uh several messages repeated often from trusted sources uh can you share with me do you have any data on what sources are trusted by the disengaged outform dismissive that i've given to not the seara um yes the question is what sources are trusted by the outform dismissive um it's not the seara club yes correct it's not the seara club um we have that data you can come to our website and you can find reports on six america's reports in which we show the data um trust data in broken out by the six americas yes sir i just have a question has it been in the light studies or any data that account for income how late the war is trying to change and the america public attitude towards it so the segment that we call the disengaged is the only segment um that is you know really starkly less uh less economically advantaged in other words they're starkly more economically disadvantaged um the two segments on that the ends the dismissive and the alarm are slightly more economically advantaged than the other segments um so on one end yes we see sort of an income gradient in our data however we also see very clear um the data are very clear that african americans care more about this issue than do caucasians and hispanic americans care more about this issue than do not spanish americans um so there's something really interesting going on in those two communities um and exactly what it is is i think an open question but it is it's a good thing i'm going to go to this side of the room please hi i'm the american geosciences institute commercial fellow in senator tom yale's office um and planning more of a communication question do you notice a difference in response in terms of i do believe that it is occurring before it's human cause when you alternate between global warming and climate change because global warming really implies a certain direction whereas climate change as you mentioned that it remains between what my place is in the context of global warming is do you see a change in response depending on where it really is so so the question is does it matter interesting assumption in your question that the term global warming carries with it the implication of human caused global warming where the term climate change doesn't carry that implication um that's that is actually yes we've learned that to be true um it turns out that most members of the public tell us they find those two terms to be synonyms they're equally comfortable with both terms um but when we get down to a more sort of subtle granular analysis when we ask them to tell us top of mind what what comes to mind first when you hear that the term global warming and we ask other people what comes to mind first when you hear the term climate change um and so by analyzing people's top of mind associations we find out it's a little different differences aren't big what are they very concerned with like not all concerned by the large concerns are somewhat more comfortable with because it doesn't necessarily carry that implication of human cost further transportation do you clarify how you're approaching the presentation of facts where it's a question that seems to be related to the fact so maybe I was a little confused at the beginning but if you seem to sort of say that other changes are real and so on and then we seem to also be surveying people about that question so I'm sure because uh right so the question is um I guess the question is some things are fact based about global warming and we're and we surveyed people about those fact based um under the those facts um the fact that climate change is real that it is human caused that is already manifesting in communities across america so we'll just say that those are three facts as ascertained by the national climate assessment but we know that not all americans believe that to be so believe any any of all each of those three things to be so more americans believe it's real then believe it's human caused and and more americans believe human caused climate change is happening then understand that it's having an impact across america today so just because it's fact based doesn't mean we don't need to under to assess public understanding of of those facts we don't present them as facts we only ask questions so I presented them to you in my preamble as factual but no we don't we we work um we work as hard as we know how to be completely unbiased and to not lead the witness so to speak um which is why that that pair of questions that I showed you about would you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who supports climate action and more or less likely to vote for a candidate who opposes climate action those are perfect parallel questions just adopting the the opposite point of view yes sir that uh looks at the effect of american attitudes and action on climate change on foreign governments that are pleasing the effect um so i'm not sure i understand the question do has anybody assessed public understanding that india and china are starting to engage have any effect on the other government's willingness to do the same fault or does america have any leadership in that ground okay that's what maybe some of the interesting question and i don't know the answer the question was does does the public understand or does the public believe that american leadership on this issue will bring other nations along we might be seeing that implicitly in the fact that the majority of americans feel like we should be doing this regardless but i don't know if they feel that way in part because they think that leadership is required and we should be leading yes sir and here it comes to do a geographic analysis i don't know you know when people think of climate change they often think of rising sea levels changing weather so i don't know if some of those effects are most common tangible like if people in coastal districts have a higher understanding of moral alarmism about climate change i wasn't sure if you've seen anything like that how to restate that question um i'll just answer the question it is absolutely true that um blue states people in blue states which happen along the coast to a great degree are are much more convinced that human cause climate changes is happening that is serious and they would like to see it solved um that doesn't really address the question which is does people's experience with climate impacts um help to convince them of the the the magnitude of the gravity of this threat karen again referencing karen ackerloft's research karen did a study in um the upper peninsula of michigan a number of summers ago in which she asked people a pretty simple question in in our survey in her survey she asked have you personally experienced global warming we've asked that in a lot of our surveys and and we've learned that about a quarter of the public in this was now almost eight ten years ago about a quarter of the public at that time said yes i've personally experienced global warming until karen did her study in the upper peninsula of michigan we didn't know what they meant by that we didn't know in what ways they felt they had personally experienced global warming and so karen asked that question in an open-ended manner they could just tell us in their own words how they had personally experienced global warming and then karen coded those impacts those perceived personal experiences and then she looked at the actual climatic record in the upper peninsula of michigan in the preceding three decades and and what she found is that four of three of the four impacts that people mentioned and they tended to be fairly mundane things like um you know heavier rain uh actually i can't it's been so long since i've looked at that i can't remember um but the point was they tended to be talking about impacts in their own backyard not i went to glacier national park as a kid and then i took my kid there 30 years later and it was stunning to see the melting of those you know the the recession of the glaciers so people were telling us that they were seeing impacts in their backyard and karen's research proved that three of the four impacts that they told us they were seeing are in fact clearly in evidence in the climatic record so it suggests that um although climate change is a slow moving phenomenon it suggests that if you pay it if you've been in one place for a while then you're paying enough attention you might actually notice the changes um that question essentially willingness to pay we have looked at it only occasionally we looked at it in 2010 when there was a possibility that climate legislation would pass on capitol hill and we found that the the cost of the policy was calculated by the congressional uh budget office at about 50 cents a day 180 a year for the average family so we asked willingness to pay and what we found is that in some instances support for climate action at the federal level actually increased with that relatively modest price tag um so i'm i'm not an expert in this uh in this issue at all but i certainly read lots of studies which show the public is willing to pay some people aren't willing to pay anything some people are willing to pay a lot on average their willingness to pay seems to be pretty well aligned with what some policies you know are thought to actually cost so i think i need to call it quits here i didn't get any suggestions from you as to policies we should be surveying on um why don't instead why don't we just why don't you come and share them with me personally because we are now at the top of the hour and i don't want to overstay my welcome so if you have policies you want us to pull on bring them on up so i want to thank you all very very much for coming this afternoon and of course this will be up on EESI's website so that you can make sure that you can forward that information to your friends or colleagues so that this information can be shared and uh all of the the presentation and the discussion will be available that way and i just want to say thank you very much to dr maybach for being with us this afternoon helping us better understand a lot of these issues with regard to public opinion and it's very very important in terms of thinking about how all of this affects what we do questions that we have things that we would like to know more about so please share with him also share with us at EESI in terms of issues that you would like to have looked at explored so that we can all try to do a better job and again thank you very very much and thank you professor maybach