by Roger Pielke
On an issue as complex and data-rich as climate, there are enough data and interpretations to offer support to most any political agenda. Thus we have arguments over the degree of agreement or lack thereof among scientists and efforts to delegitimize outlier positions in order to assert one true and proper perspective. Adding to the mix is the temptation to push “facts” beyond what science can support, which offers each side opportunity for legitimate critique of the excesses of their opponents.
In the first half of the twentieth century American political commentator Walter Lippmann recognized that uniformity of perspective was not necessary for action to take place in democracies. He explained that the goal of politics is not to make everyone think alike, but rather, to get people who think differently to act alike. A large body of scholarship supports the limitations of the deficit model, yet it remains a defining feature of debates over climate policy.
It is bad enough that those operating under the assumptions of the deficit model are wasting their time or even working against their own interests. What is worse is that such strategies fail to recognize that the battle over public opinion on climate change has long been over—it has been won, decisively in fact, by those favoring action.
Data on public opinion on climate change have been collected, in some cases for several decades, in countries around the world. What studies show is remarkably strong support for the so-called scientific consensus about the reality of climate change, as well as strong support for policy action. Even in the notoriously climate skeptical United States, the Gallup organization finds that: “trends throughout the past decade—and some stretching back to 1989—have shown generally consistent majority support for the idea that global warming is real, that human activities cause it, and that news reports on it are correct, if not underestimated.”[110]
Internationally, a Gallup poll in 2007 and 2008 of 128 countries found that strong majorities of the general population in most countries—including most large emitters of carbon dioxide—believe that global warming is a result of human activities.[111] Public opinion does vary a great deal—often literally with the weather—but it has overall been remarkably consistent over many years in support of action. Public opinion, rather than an obstacle to action on climate change, is in fact a resource to be capitalized upon.
Studies of the relationship of public opinion and political action on a wide range of subjects show nothing unique or even interesting about the state of public opinion on climate change. Significant policy action has occurred on other issues with less public support on many occasions, as I have documented in The Climate Fix.
So public opinion should be a political asset for those working to advance policies to address climate change. But efforts to intensify public opinion through apocalyptic visions of weather-gone-wild or appeals to scientific authority, instead of motivating further support for action, have instead led to a loss of trust in campaigning scientists. Citing the ample evidence of the ineffectiveness of such approaches, Dan Kahan complains of climate campaigners, “They keep pounding the data, and with a rhetorical hammer that drives home all the symbolism that generates distrust and resistance in larger parts of the population…. Why?”[112]
If public opinion is not the reason we have failed to make much progress on climate change, then what is? Two of the biggest obstacles, which I have discussed at length elsewhere, are summarized here.
The first is a failure of political plausibility. As discussed above, conventional wisdom on climate policy has long been that energy prices need to increase significantly. More expensive energy fits into a complex causal chain of policy action as follows:
Win public opinion via closing the science deficit (now focused on claims about extreme weather events), defeating the skeptics à
the scientifically informed public will pressure politicians for action à
politicians respond by passing laws, and international treaties are signed à
dirty fossil energy becomes more expensive à
people consequently feel economic pain (incentives) à
not liking economic pain, people change their behavior and the market responds with more energy efficiency and fossil fuel alternatives à
such market demand stimulates innovation in the public and private sectors, as well as in civil society à
the resulting innovation delivers low carbon alternatives à
GHG emissions go down, extreme weather (and other) problems are thus solved.
Laid out from start to finish the entire causal chain seems like a Rube Goldberg invention. If the causal chain begins to weaken at the first step, where the deficit model is assumed to operate, it completely breaks apart at the point where energy is supposed to become more expensive in order to create incentives to propel efficiency and innovation. The idea that higher-priced energy can be used as a lever to transform the global energy system may work in abstract economic models, but fails spectacularly in real-world politics, where energy costs are directly linked to virtually every aspect of human well-being, from the price of food to the availability of decent jobs.
A second obstacle is the pathological obsession of many climate campaigners with the climate skeptics. By concluding that the skeptics are the main obstacle to action, campaigners are devoting their energies to a fruitless fight. Make no mistake, fighting skeptics has its benefits—it reinforces a simplistic good-versus-evil view of the world, it gives a sense of doing something about climate change, and elevates scientific expertise to a privileged place in policy debates.[113] However, one thing that it does not do is contribute towards effective action on climate change.
The battle over public opinion on climate change has long been won, and not by the skeptics. However, simply by virtue of their continued existence, the climate skeptics may have the last laugh, because many climate campaigners seem to be able to see nothing else in the debate. Climate skeptics are not all powerful and may not even be much relevant to efforts to decarbonize the global economy. They are not the reason that we haven’t solved the climate change problem, but they are an easy explanation for more than twenty years of failed campaigning.
So What Next?
The science that shows a human impact on the planet has been convincing for many decades, at least back to the late 1980s. That impact includes but is not limited to the effects of carbon dioxide on atmospheric temperature. We are indeed running risks with the future climate through the unmitigated release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But unlike the debate over the costs of carbon pricing, debate over the benefits of mitigation cannot be resolved empirically, at least not on political time scales, for the simple reason that changes in climate are observed over many decades and centuries.
The great irony here of course is that the debate over the science of disasters and climate change is completely unconnected from the debate over carbon pricing—at least in the realpolitik world of economic policies—as no scenario of doom and gloom is going to convince governments to inflict short-term economic harm on the citizens who legitimize their power. Yet climate campaigners often act as if such a calculus is possible. For instance, the New York Times recommended exactly this strategy for Indonesia, demanding that the nation take immediate steps to reduce emissions, “sacrificing short-term economic gain for the long-term health of the planet.”[114]
Although the climate issue has largely been subsumed to economic and other agendas of most of the world’s policymakers, there remains a solid basis for concern about the risks of climate change due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While the climate wars will go on—perhaps forever—characterized by a poisonous mix of dodgy science, personal attacks, and partisan warfare, the good news is that progress can yet be made outside of this battle.
The key to securing action on climate change is to break the problem down into more manageable parts. This is already happening. For instance, a coalition of activists and politicians, including numerous prominent
scientists, has argued that there are practical reasons to focus attention on so-called “non-carbon forcings”—human influences on the climate system beyond carbon dioxide. It is worth noting that in the United States, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), a loud opponent to most action related to climate, supports action on non-carbon forcings, such as soot and other particles that come from unregulated coal plants and cook-stoves.
Similarly, there exists a wide international coalition in support of improving adaptive responses to climate—including climate change of both human and non-human origins. Food security and natural disasters are two issues where common ground can be found in a need for improved policy responses.
Carbon dioxide will remain a vexing problem because it is tied directly to the production of most of the world’s energy, which in turn supports the function of the global economy. Recent experience in the United States with shale gas illustrates the virtues of innovation. Widely available, inexpensive shale gas has displaced enough coal in a remarkably short time to lead to dramatically reduced carbon dioxide emissions by the U.S.
Natural gas, a carbon-intensive fuel, is not a long-term solution to the challenge of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but recent experience proves an essential policy point: Make clean(er) energy cheap,[115] and dirty energy will be quickly displaced. To secure cheap energy alternatives requires innovation, not just technological, but also institutional and social. Nuclear power offers the promise of large-scale carbon-free energy, but is currently expensive and controversial.
Securing innovation requires resources and a political commitment to energy as a focus of public attention, much as is done in health, agriculture, and militaries. Funding could be raised through a low carbon tax—one consistent with the provisions of the iron law. A public commitment to energy innovation might be realized by recognizing the world’s need for vastly more energy and the rights of billions of people to energy access commensurate with the richest around the world. An appeal to opportunity and growth will always find a stronger political constituency than demands for higher costs and limits.[116]
The need for a pragmatic way forward brings us full circle, back to where we began the exploration of disasters and climate change. If we are to respond effectively to the mounting toll from disasters, then experts will have to maintain their credibility, and policies will have to be grounded in accurate understandings.
Legitimacy and accuracy are important because the rising costs of disasters are a significant challenge for society, especially in regions that lack the political and economic resources to cope effectively with their impacts. Of course, over the long term we should all hope that a global transition to clean, cheap energy can reduce or prevent increases in the incidence and severity of extreme events due to human-caused climate change. In the short-to-medium term, though, the evidence tells us quite clearly that social change, not changes in climate, will be the dominant cause of rising disaster losses.
This means that, for the foreseeable future, policies that reduce disaster losses will be those that focus on increasing disaster preparedness. Linking rising disaster losses to climate change distorts the science and points us away from the policies that can be most effective in preparing for disasters. But the false link between disasters and climate change also distracts us from the many politically pragmatic and economically sensible justifications for accelerating the transition to clean, cheap energy.
In fits and starts, the real world is moving on from the climate debates of the past several decades. Those calling for action can either swim with the tide or against it—realpolitik is frustrating in that way. The legitimacy wars will of course continue, but for those interested in practical actions with consequential effects, there is a pragmatic, positive way forward.
About the Author
Roger Pielke, Jr.
Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001 and is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program, Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). His next book will be on sport in society.
Acknowledgements
This short book is the product of decades of research, collaborating, teaching and learning on this subject. There are dozens and dozens of people who I’ve worked with and learned from on this topic. And there are hundreds and hundreds of papers, analyses, reports and assessments which have helped to shape scientific understandings in this field. I regret that they all could not be cited here, but the reports of the IPCC and the peer-reviewed literature is only a click or two away, and I encourage anyone interested in this field to have a look.
A few people deserve special thanks for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript: John McAneney, Delphine McAneney, Dan Sarewitz, Michael Shellenberger, Ryan Crompton, Randy Dole, Marty Hoerling, Roger Pielke, Sr., and Björn Ola-Linnér. For providing data, special thanks to Ryan Crompton, Chris Landsea, Kevin Simmons, and Ryan Maue.
In addition to those mentioned above, many others have also helped me to better understand the issues associated with disasters and climate change over the years, especially including: Mickey Glantz, Laurens Bouwer, Hans von Storch, Shali Mohleji, Jessica Weinkle, Joel Gratz, Rade Musulin, Chris Landsea, Peter Höppe, Eberhard Faust, Kevin Simmons, Dan Sutter, Mary Downton, Ken Kunkel, Harold Brooks, Bill Hooke, and Stan Changnon. I’ve no doubt missed many others, please accept my apologies.
This book would not be possible without Dan Sarewitz, Jason Lloyd, G. Pascal Zachary, Bobbie Klein, and Ami Nacu-Schmidt, thanks. CIRES at the University of Colorado, directed by Waleed Abdalati, provides a nurturing, supportive environment for an incredibly wide range of research. I and my colleagues are fortunate to call it our institutional home.
Last to acknowledge but first in all other respects are my family—Julie, Megan, Jacob, and Calvin—who not only put up with a wonky father and husband, but are the source of endless support and inspiration.
Of course, all errors, large and small, in the text belong to me alone.
* * *
[*] Daniel Sarewitz is co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, and Professor of Science and Society at Arizona State University.
[2] The claims of increasing floods and drought are found at “President Obama’s Plan to Fight Climate Change,” The White House website (25 June 2013), available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan; the National Climate Assessment on which the claims are based says: “There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900” and “when averaging over the entire contiguous U.S., there is no overall trend in flood magnitudes.” The assessment report is available at: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/
[3] “Selected Quotations of Gilbert F. White,” Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado at Boulder website, available at: http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/gfw/quotes.html
[4] In May, 2014 the White House upped the ante by organizing its climate policy advocacy around extreme events. See “Climate Change and President Obama’s Action Plan,” The White House website, available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change
[5] “Weekly Address: Confronting the Growing Threat of Climate Change,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary press release (29 June 2013), available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/29/ weekly-address-confronting-growing-threat-climate-change; as will be documented in detail in the pages that follow, the U.S. has not experienced an increase in hurricanes, floods, or drought, according to the Obama Administration’s own National Climate Assessment.
[6] Most obviously, there is no evidence of “more hurricanes” in the U.S. or globally, as documented in detail below. The president’s claims about droughts and floods are also questionable, as explained in the previous footnote.
[7] Z. Colman, “Gore laments scientists ‘won’t let us�
� tie climate change to tornadoes,” The Hill (11 June 2013), available at: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/304755-gore-says-record-breaking-tornadoes-a-result-of-climate-change
[8] “Roger Revelle Lecture Series,” National Academy of Sciences website, available at: http://nas-sites.org/revellelecture/past-lecturers/2006-2/
[9] Here I reference the actual fossils, not members of the NAS.
[10] R. Pielke, Jr., “Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Accounting for Recent Calamities,” Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture (15 Mar. 2006), available at: http://nas-sites.org/revellelecture/files/2011/11/Revelle_program_2006.pdf
[11] R. Pielke, Jr., “Editorial: Reflections on Science and Policy,” WeatherZine 28 (June 2001), available at: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/zine/archives/1-29/txt/zine28.txt
[12] “Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11,” CNN Politics website (1 June 2009), available at: http://www.cnn.com/ 2009/POLITICS/06/01/cheney.speech/
[13] W. Hoge, “2 Former Cabinet Members Say Britain Exaggerated Iraq Claims,” New York Times (17 June 2003), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/europe/17CND-BRIT.html
[14] A. Kellow, “All in a good cause,” Online Opinion (16 May 2008), available at: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/ view.asp?article=7368
[15] P. Höppe and R. Pielke, Jr., eds., Workshop on Climate Change and Disaster Losses: Understanding and Attributing Trends and Projections, Final Workshop Report (Hohenkammer, Germany: Munich Re and University of Colorado, 25-26 May 2006), available at: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/sparc/research/projects/extreme_events/munich_workshop/workshop_report.html
