[TheClimate.Vote] May 26, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sun May 26 09:49:28 EDT 2019

/May 26, 2019/

[video talk about thinking about thinking]
*Climate Change is Too Big for our Brains ft. Mike Rugnetta*
Published on May 23, 2019
Hot Mess https://www.audible.com/hotmess or text hotmess to 500 500!
What can a bunch of circles and squares from a 19th century novella tell 
us about Climate Change? Its metaphor time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pqp_8XLC6c

[measuring climate opinions]
Article · Apr 17, 2019
*Climate Change in the American Mind: Data, Tools, and Trends*
By Matthew Ballew, Anthony Leiserowitz, Connie Roser-Renouf, Seth 
Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Jennifer Marlon, Erik Lyon, Matthew Goldberg 
and Edward Maibach
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article: "Climate 
Change in the American Mind: Data, Tools, and Trends" published in the 
journal Environment.

We have made 10 years of our Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) 
survey data publicly available, as well as launching an interactive data 
visualization tool where you can explore the diversity of American 
responses to climate change for yourself. The tool enables you to 
examine Americans' climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, policy 
support, and behaviors nationally, over time, and broken down by 
different demographic and political groups.

Here are a few highlights:

    Trends in Global Warming Risk Perceptions from 2008 to 2017

    Overall, American perceptions of global warming as a risk have
    increased considerably since 2008, reaching record high levels in
    2017. Americans, however, still generally perceive global warming as
    a greater risk to future generations, other species, and people in
    developing countries than to themselves...

We also find that Americans who hear about global warming in the media 
or talk about it with their own family and friends are more likely to 
perceive global warming as a risk and support polices to reduce it...

However, both young Republicans and Democrats discuss global warming 
with their family and friends and hear about it in the media at much 
lower rates than older Republicans and Democrats, respectively.

    Although not displayed in the figure, worry about global warming--a
    more affective (as opposed to cognitive) measure of risk
    perception--follows a similar upward trend, increasing steadily from
    51% of Americans in 2010 to 60% in 2017, returning to levels similar
    to 2008 (62%). Alongside the decline in public understanding from
    2008 to 2011, worry was likely affected by political elite cues, but
    perhaps by the economic recession as well.1919 J. T. Carmichael and
    R. J. Brulle, "Elite Cues, Media Coverage, and Public Concern: An
    Integrated Path Analysis of Public Opinion on Climate Change,
    2001–2013," Environmental Politics 26 (2017): 232–52.

    At the time of the recession, economic concerns (e.g., fear of
    losing employment) might have eclipsed concern about climate change,
    which may reflect the "finite pool of worry" hypothesis, that
    increased worry about other issues leads to less worry about climate
    change.2020 E. U. Weber, "What Shapes Perceptions of Climate
    Change?," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3 (2010): 338.
    An increase in extreme weather over the past few years, including
    more powerful hurricanes and stronger heat waves and droughts, may
    also be affecting risk perceptions as more Americans personally
    experience the impacts associated with climate change.

The article is available here. 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2019.1589300
The underlying data are downloadable from the Open Science Framework 
https://osf.io/w36gn/ - and we encourage you to explore the data for 
yourself using our online interactive tool. 
http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/americans-climate-views/

We hope that by making the individual survey data available, we can 
better support your efforts to investigate the dynamics of public 
opinion and engage different Americans in climate change solutions...
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-mind-data-tools-and-trends/

[Yale 360 Interview]
*Why Low-Income Households Need to Be Part of the Clean Energy Revolution*

Researcher Tony Reames focuses his work on the growing energy divide 
between rich and poor Americans. In an interview with Yale Environment 
360, he talks about why it is important to provide low-income 
communities with better access to affordable clean energy technologies.

By Katherine Bagley - May 16, 2019
- - -
This growing divide in energy affordability and accessibility highlights 
the need for what University of Michigan researcher Tony Reames refers 
to as "energy justice." For decades, low-income households have tried to 
cope with rising energy costs. Yet, as Reames' research shows, they 
often have the least access to energy-efficient or clean energy 
technologies. He and colleagues have found that the cost to upgrade to 
energy-efficient lightbulbs is twice as expensive in low-income 
neighborhoods as it is in more affluent areas. They have also found that 
for every dollar Michigan utilities spend on energy efficiency programs 
targeted at low-income consumers, they spend as much as $4.34 on 
programs for higher-income consumers.
- - -
The second major barrier is some of the institutional structures that 
make it so difficult for, especially poor people, to access programs. 
You have to bare your heart and all your information and be completely 
vulnerable just to be able to get assistance. You have to go from one 
office to another office, so there's a lack of coordination between 
programs. Even with the two federal programs that I was talking about, 
LIHEAP is operated by Health and Human Services, and WAP is operated by 
the Department of Energy. Sometimes those programs are operated by the 
same agency at the state level or even the county level. But because of 
the reporting structures to the federal government, it makes it 
difficult for an agency to see that someone's been getting energy bill 
assistance through LIHEAP for four years, so maybe we ought to go and 
use WAP to make that person's house more efficient.

e360: How much of this energy injustice is related to home ownership? 
You've talked about replacing furnaces and similar actions, but if you 
rent, you seemingly have no course of action other than to change your 
light bulbs.

     "You can see through the data that there's a difference in the 
efficiency between houses owned and houses rented."

Reames: That's so true. You can definitely see through the data that 
there's a difference in the efficiency between houses owned and houses 
rented. With the weatherization program, we notice that about 80 percent 
of those funds go to owner-occupied housing, and about 80 to 90 percent 
of renters pay their own electricity bill. There's no real incentive for 
landlords to participate in these programs, especially as they come with 
restrictions on raising the rent for a few years. Finding ways to entice 
landlords to do this is one of the conversations we're having.

e360: Much of the research that you and your group has done has been 
based in Detroit or in the surrounding areas. Detroit has been 
highlighted as the shining example of a Rust Belt community reinventing 
itself through the lens of sustainability and green innovation. Is 
everyone benefiting equally in this reinvention?

Reames: Based on my assessment, the answer is no. But it takes some 
time, and that's always a challenge when you're trying to revitalize a 
city, especially when you've lost population. It's like the focus is 
getting people back in, sometimes less than on the people who have 
stayed through the devastation. It seems like the tide is turning. I 
feel like the two things can coexist. You can have new development, but 
you can also have healthy, thriving, existing neighborhoods. I hope 
that's where we're going.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-low-income-households-need-to-be-part-of-the-clean-energy-revolution

*This Day in Climate History - May 26, 1990 - from D.R. Tucker*
May 26, 1990: The New York Times covers the release of the First 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:

    "A panel of scientists warned today that unless emissions of carbon
    dioxide and other harmful gases were immediately cut by more than 60
    percent, global temperatures would rise sharply over the next
    century, with unforeseeable consequences for humanity.

    "While much of the substance of the report has already been
    disclosed, the report had immediate political consequences. Prime
    Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, breaking with the Bush
    Administration's skepticism over the need for immediate action, said
    today that if other countries did their part, Britain would reduce
    the projected growth of its carbon dioxide emissions enough to
    stabilize them at 1990 levels by the year 2005."

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rapid-action-on-global-warming.html
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