Christopher P. Borick

Weather or Not? Examining the Impact of Meteorological Conditions on Public Opinion regarding Global Warming

AbstractPublic opinion surveys in the United States have shown a substantial shift in American public views on global warming between 2008 and 2012. During the period between 2008 and 2010, surveys tracked a significant decline in the number of Americans that believed there was evidence that global warming was occurring. Then, during 2011 and 2012, surveys began to show a rebound in belief among Americans that global warming was indeed happening. This study serves to further establish the significant role that weather played in the short-term fluctuations in public opinion regarding global warming that has been observed since 2008. First, the study shows that individuals regularly refer to weather-related factors when explaining how they arrived at their conclusion that the planet is either warming or not warming and that these explanations correspond with broad weather patterns observed over the 2008–12 time frame. The study also finds that actual weather conditions, and specifically seasonal snowfall, s...

IS SUPPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE ACTION CONDITIONAL ON PERCEPTIONS OF RECIPROCITY? EVIDENCE FROM SURVEY EXPERIMENTS IN CANADA, THE US, NORWAY, AND SWEDEN

The challenges of collective action are presented by leaders in many industrialized countries as a major obstacle to effective action on climate change. Notably, the argument goes, a fair international solution must appropriately constrain large greenhouse gas emitters like China. This paper asks whether citizen support for multilateral climate policies also depends on whether other countries are seen to reciprocate. We analyze results from population-based survey experiments in the US, Canada, Norway, and Sweden, asking subjects whether they think their country should commit internationally to emission reductions. Randomly assigned sub-samples were presented with statements suggesting that China may or may not choose to cooperate, or alternatively making no mention of China. We find that reciprocity is important to respondents in the smaller Scandinavian countries but not in North America. These findings suggest that country size is more important than national traditions of multilateral cooperation in predicting support for unilateral climate action.

INDIVIDUAL DISCOUNT RATES AND CLIMATE CHANGE: IS DISCOUNT RATE ASSOCIATED WITH SUPPORT FOR A CARBON TAX?

The issue of climate change is often framed as one in which contemporary actions, often with affixed costs, are necessary in order to prevent even greater costs being paid during a period in the future. Under such a framework it is thus necessary to calculate the rate in which future benefits are discounted to reflect current values. In this paper we examine how individual level discount rates affect their support for a policy tool that incurs contemporary costs in an effort to prevent future environmental damages. We find that individuals with higher discount rates are significantly less likely to support the imposition of a carbon tax in comparison with individuals that have lower discount rates. Even when controlling for other individual level attributes such as party affiliation a person’s rate for discounting the future is shown to be a strong predictor of their support for a carbon tax.