7 Out of 10 Surveyed Want Climate Action. Are Eco-Activists Ready for Them?

by Emily Gertz

Published November 26, 2008 @ 09:53AM PT

 

When it comes to stopping climate change, "consumers" around the world want their governments to stop bickering and get to work already.

Recently 12,000 people around the world were asked about their current worries. 43% rated climate change ahead of the global economy, says The Guardian. 77% want their governments to cut carbon emissions by their fair share or more (meaning that developing nations, which are not responsible for most of the excess greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, should get a break, so that they can continue to grow the size of their economies). In the US, 72% say we should reduce our emissions at least as much as other countries.

The survey -- conducted in September and October -- involved 1,000 respondents in each of 12 nations: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Mexico, UK and the US.

Encouraging stuff. But do people grasp what it will take to cut carbon emissions enough to quickly stabilize the climate? Apparently not. Despite the global financial meltdown, which would seem to prove that unregulated markets fail to keep themselves honest or put the global public good ahead of personal gain, Green Ink notes that twice as many respondents to this survey say they want their governments to invest in methods to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as support international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol.

Respondents also feel that governments should focus more on increasing investment in renewable energy, halting deforestation and conserving water resources than on creating carbon markets or taxes.

The Obama-Biden administration will apparently support a strong cap-and-trade plan in its early rounds of legislation; it's going to be hard work to get that through Congress intact. Are there enviro-advocates making this case effectively to the American public? I've gotten email twice from a river protection group that wants me to blog about its new water bottle. And I recently heard from Greenpeace about a project to mass videos about stopping global warming onto YouTube. Target date: December 6, the Global Day of Action for Climate Change.

This is a step in a good direction, since it's trying to coordinate the activities of the many advocacy groups that usually compete for online eyeballs, mentions in blogs, and footnotes in Wikipedia entries. I see nothing about coordinating the message, though. So chances are that overall, these videos will not go much beyond a basic exhortation to stop climate change.

According to this survey, people already agree with that message. So now the question is: how do we do it?

If it seemed likely that soft market and government mechanisms were going to get us from here (384 ppm atmospheric CO2 and rising) to there within 15-40 years (halting rising CO2 at a minimum, and lowering it if-and-as possible), that would be rainbows-and-unicorns wonderful. And if dickering among nations were not necessary to make this happen, that would be just as nice. (Rainbows, unicorns, and sweet furry bunnies.)

But even in the U.S., where both the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to ratify the international Kyoto treaty, and the Bush White House has intentionally, effectively obstructed federal action on climate change, the global agreement has proven important. It's the basis for the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, under which over 884 cities aspire to “meet or beat” the Kyoto Protocol emissions targets.

There's little evidence at the moment that a people will cut their carbon unless it's mandated from above --by a mayor or a president.  And that process seems to need driving by international agreements like the Kyoto treaty.

I'm sure it will be more fun to swamp YouTube with videos on December 6, than it will be to talk to citizens about cap-and-trade plans for carbon emissions. But climate action advocates need to take their campaigning to this next level of sophistication.

Simple messages were good for a simplistic time. But George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be out of office in six short weeks.*  If enviro-activists want to be relevant, it's time to step up to the Obama-Biden plate.

 

 

* Of course, the Bush White House needs watching even in lame-duck times.  As Juliet Eilperin reports in today's Washington Post, "As the Bush administration prepares to issue its ruling on whether to limit greenhouse gases, it's sending out a message to some of its allies: Tell us how much you don't want us to regulate emissions linked to global warming. Last week, the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs sent an e-mail to mayors reminding them that time was running out if they wanted to comment on the proposal the administration issued in July, which laid out how the government might curb greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. A 2007 Supreme Court decision required the Environmental Protection Agency to issue such a ruling, but the White House made it clear in its e-mail that it does not think that is a good idea."

 

Image: Still from the promo video for Frontline - Heat, a global investigation into the challenge of stopping global warming.