"'Climate Crisis' Claims Aren’t Moving Public Opinion Much"

 Source:

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/climate-crisis-claims-arent-moving-public-opinion-much

"Opinion polls conducted over the past two decades show climate change consistently at or near the bottom of the public’s list of concerns.

... a United Nations poll surveying more than seven million respondents from 195 countries asked participants to rank their top 16 policy priorities.

Quality education ranked first, and “Action Taken on Climate Change” ranked dead last, receiving 300,000 fewer votes than “Access to Telephone and Internet,” which finished 15th on the list.

This fact is making climate alarmists—those peddling the delusion that human-caused climate change is destroying the Earth—increasingly desperate.

It seems to be having the same effect on members of the compliant mainstream media, who have jettisoned all pretense of objectivity and the search for the truth about the causes and consequences of climate change.

News outlets are increasingly bowing to the demands of progressive radical environmentalists to refer not to global warming or climate change but instead to a “climate crisis” or a “climate emergency.”

Global warming and climate change can be objectively measured and assembled into unbiased datasets, though this has not always been done.

“Climate crisis” and “climate emergency,” by contrast, are phrases with no scientific meaning, because they are normative, not descriptive.

 Any change from some idealized past state of the climate can be labelled a “crisis” or “emergency.”

People or governments may or may not need to worry about a changing climate or a warming globe, but it’s all hands on deck during an “emergency” or “crisis.”

... Public opinion surveys show most people still refuse to enter climate emergency mode.

Polls show even those people who think there is a climate apocalypse on the way are willing to pay astonishingly little to prevent it.

This fact may limit the range of climate policies politicians can impose without risk of being turned out of office in the next election.

Despite a barrage of dozens if not hundreds of stories in print, online, on the radio, and on television daily, the number of people who believe humans are primarily responsible for climate change has changed little over time.

For more than a decade, public opinion surveys have consistently shown only a slight majority of those surveyed are “moderately,” “very,” or “extremely” certain humans are causing climate change.

For instance, in a 2019 survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by the respected polling service Rasmussen for The Heartland Institute, 48 percent of those polled said they believed human activities are primarily responsible for climate change.

By contrast, 38 percent said they believed “long-term planetary trends” are primarily responsible for climate change, with 14 percent unsure.

Two years of rabid propagandizing later, a new Rassmussen/Heartland survey of 2,000 likely voters finds the number of people who believe climate change is caused primarily by human activity grew by 7 percent,

but so did the number of people who believe climate change is primarily caused by long-term planetary trends.

Skepticism is growing even as climate crisis mode kicks in.

Another recent survey of 1,000 voters, conducted by MWR strategies on behalf of the American Energy Alliance, found 13 percent of those surveyed did not believe global warming was a problem at all,

14 percent thought it was a minor problem, and

23 percent thought it a moderate problem.

Only 24 percent of those surveyed thought global warming constitutes a “crisis.”

Also remarkably consistent over time is the fact that people are unwilling to spend very much to prevent climate change, even if they think it is a crisis.

In a 2019 Washington Post/Kaiser Family survey, 60 percent of respondents said they believed the world had fewer than 10 years to prevent the worst effects of climate change, with a majority saying the world has two years or fewer to act.

Even so, 51 percent of those surveyed would be “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed to paying a $2 monthly tax on their residential electric bills to fight climate change.

Similarly, 61 percent would reject a 10 cents per gallon increase in the gasoline tax to fight climate change.

The numbers opposed to electric bill fees and gas tax hikes rose sharply when the proposed fees were increased:

71 percent oppose a $10 monthly tax on U.S. residential electric bills,

and 74 percent oppose increasing the gas tax by 25 cents per gallon.

These relatively modest cost increases are far less than what the Biden administration’s climate change efforts will cost.

In the 2019 Heartland/Rasmussen survey, 63 percent said they believed it was very or somewhat likely climate change “will be catastrophic for humans, plants, and animals,”

but only 34 percent of those who believe climate change is caused primarily by humans said the federal or state governments should limit air travel to help prevent it,

and just 24 percent said governments should require people to limit their consumption of meat to fight climate change.

The more recent MWR survey produced similar results.

While 47 percent of participants said they believed global warming was a “major challenge or problem” (23 percent)

or a “crisis” (24 percent),

and another 37 percent thought it was either a “moderate” problem (23 percent)

or a “small problem” (14) percent—

meaning 84 percent of those surveyed think global warming is a problem to a greater or lesser degree

—people are still unwilling to give up much freedom or dollars to fight climate change.

The MWR poll found 80 percent of those surveyed do not believe the federal government should mandate the kind of cars people can buy,

and 61 percent even rejected the idea that government should subsidize electric car purchases.

Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed—almost triple the number of people who said climate change was not a problem at all—said they would be unwilling to spend even a single dollar to “achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2035,”

and another 42 percent said they would be unwilling to spend more than $10 or less annually to achieve that result.

Addressing global warming directly, 37 percent of those surveyed by MWR said the amount of money they would be willing to spend “each year to address global warming” was zero,

and another 44 percent said they would only be willing to spend less than $10 annually on it.

The fact that 81 percent of those surveyed would be unwilling to spend even a piddling $10 a year to fight global warming

means many of those who say they believe climate change is a major challenge or a crisis are unwilling to put much effort into fighting it.

... only 28 percent of those surveyed by MWR support the idea, and 62 percent reject it outright.

After years of fearmongering and attempted indoctrination, people aren’t really that concerned about climate change when the rubber meets the road with action—or dollars in this case.

This message should cause despair among the climate-alarm set, and politicians should heed it as they shape the nation’s energy policies."