Specifically, 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37–43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true.

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    yeah it's definitely not down to individual choices or whatever, but the total restructuring of the economy necessary to prevent climate apocalypse would result in major change to the American lifestyle, and i'd like to know what the opposition to such a restructuring would be. Even though the results in this study are interesting, and i'll admit surprising to me, the specific policies they're asking about are:

    • requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and use the money to reduce other taxes (such as income tax) by an equal amount.

    • Requiring electric utilities to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by the year 2035.

    • generating renewable energy (solar and wind) on public land in the USA

    • a “Green New Deal” to produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The “Deal” would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years, upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings and transportation infrastructure, increase energy efficiency, invest in “green” technology research and development, and provide training for jobs in the new “green” economy.

    Like, these basically amount to "should we press the Fix the Climate button or not?" The Carbon Tax proposal is specifically formulated to be as uncontroversial as possible, and the GND proposal omits all of the controversial parts of the actual GND brought before congress. It's essentially the Democrat position on climate policy, which is that private sector scientists are gonna have that Fix the Climate button ready by 2050 at the latest, and by then we'll definitely have the political power to press it, and at no point will anything major have to happen to the American way of life.

    • Nik [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is exactly what I was getting at; you said it better than I could. When the choices are laid out like “Should we save our future and have no negative impacts on your life whatsoever, or should we do nothing” of course the majority of people will support it.