New Episode of Resources Radio: "Surveying American Public Opinion on Climate Change and the Environment, with Jon Krosnick"

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “Surveying American Public Opinion on Climate Change and the Environment, with Jon Krosnick.”

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Jon Krosnick, a university fellow at Resources for the Future and a professor at Stanford University. Krosnick discusses key takeaways from the Climate Insights 2020 survey, part of an ongoing project which asks Americans about climate change and maps how their attitudes have changed over the years. Notably, Krosnick finds that a majority of Americans have consistently believed in global warming and that a growing minority say that the issue is extremely personally important. Rebutting the conventional argument that environmental concerns are a “luxury good,” Krosnick also concludes that the coronavirus pandemic and the movement for racial justice have not reduced public concern about climate change.

Listen here.

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• Recent crises haven’t diverted attention from climate change: “The [luxury good] hypothesis in its core form is … when Americans want government to be focused on solving huge problems— the coronavirus, the economic crash, race relations, and so on—maybe people think it’s less important to work on environmental problems … The amazing thing that we see in the survey is a resounding ‘no’ to that [theory]. The answer is that all of the disruption in the country that we’ve seen over the last four to five months has led to no change in [attitudes towards climate change].” (15:15)
• Belief in global warming has remained steady over time: “Four in five American adults believe that the planet is warmer now than it was 100 years ago, and that number has been remarkably consistent over the last 25 years. In 1997, for example, it was 77 percent.” (18:01)
• A quarter of Americans now see climate change as personally urgent: “One in four Americans now call this issue [of climate change] extremely personally important to them. That’s huge. Those people will not only be voting based on the issue, but they’ll be giving money to lobbying groups, they’ll be attending rallies, they’ll be making phone calls and sending letters to elected representatives, and they’ll be reading and learning and talking about the issue … That passionate group has grown dramatically and will [have] an important impact on this election.” (21:43)