Robert J. Brulle

Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002–2010

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the factors affecting U.S. public concern about the threat of climate change between January 2002 and December 2010. Utilizing Stimson’s method of constructing aggregate opinion measures, data from 74 separate surveys over a 9-year period are used to construct quarterly measures of public concern over global climate change. We examine five factors that should account for changes in levels of concern: 1) extreme weather events, 2) public access to accurate scientific information, 3) media coverage, 4) elite cues, and 5) movement/countermovement advocacy. A time-series analysis indicates that elite cues and structural economic factors have the largest effect on the level of public concern about climate change. While media coverage exerts an important influence, this coverage is itself largely a function of elite cues and economic factors. Weather extremes have no effect on aggregate public opinion. Promulgation of scientific information to the public on climate change has a minimal effect. The implication would seem to be that information-based science advocacy has had only a minor effect on public concern, while political mobilization by elites and advocacy groups is critical in influencing climate change concern.

Media’s social construction of environmental issues: focus on global warming – a comparative study

Global warming has been a well recognized environmental issue in the United States for the past ten years, even though scientists had identified it as a potential problem years before in 1896. We find debate about the issue in the United States media coverage while controversy among the majority of scientists is rare. The role that media plays in constructing the norms and ideas in society is researched to understand how they socially construct global warming and other environmental issues. To identify if the U.S. Media presents a biased view of global warming, the following are discussed (1) the theoretical perspective of media and the environment; (2) scientific overview and history of global warming; (3) media coverage of global warming, and (4) research findings from the content analysis of three countries’ newspaper articles and two international scientific journals produced in 2000 with comparison of these countries economies, industries, and environments. In conclusion, our research demonstrates that the U.S. with differing industries, predominantly dominated by the fossil fuel industry, in comparison to New Zealand and Finland has a significant impact on the media coverage of global warming. The U.S’s media states that global warming is controversial and theoretical, yet the other two countries portray the story that is commonly found in the international scientific journals. Therefore, media, acting as one driving force, is providing citizens with piecemeal information that is necessary to assess the social, environmental and political conditions of the country and world.

Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations

This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over

Human behavior and sustainability

900 million, with an annual average of

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF POLITICS: Climate Change Denial and Political Polarization

64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.

BUILDING ENVIRONMENTALISM: The Founding of Environmental Movement Organizations in the United States, 1900–2000

7 Sustainability demands changes in human behavior. To this end, priority areas include reforming formal insti- tutions, strengthening the institutions of civil society, improving citizen engagement, curbing consumption and population growth, addressing social justice issues, and reflecting on value and belief systems. We review existing knowledge across these areas and conclude that the global sustainability deficit is not primarily the result of a lack of academic knowledge. Rather, unsustainable behaviors result from a vicious cycle, where tra- ditional market and state institutions reinforce disincentives for more sustainable behaviors while, at the same time, the institutions of civil society lack momentum to effectively promote fundamental reforms of those insti- tutions. Achieving more sustainable behaviors requires this cycle to be broken. We call on readers to contribute to social change through involvement in initiatives like the Ecological Society of Americas Earth Stewardship Initiative or the nascent Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere.

Spinning Our Way to Sustainability

Newly elected Republican Senator Paul states succinctly the conservative view of U.S. cooperation with international efforts to stem global warming. Liberals view Paul and friends to be endangering efforts to save the planet. The partisan split, analyzed incisively by McCright and Dunlap, will likely intensify in the wake of the conservative midterm election victories and possible mobilization of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. As McCright and Dunlap note, the partisan split over global warming is entwined with a broader polarization that intensified since the late 1990s. We address facets of American political culture that feed this polarization and support McCright and Dunlap’s critique of “reflexive modernity” theories. For more than a century, American political debates have ensued over two competing policy regimes, market liberalism, stressing unfettered capitalism, strong property rights, and a minimal social safety net, and social liberalism, favoring modest state intervention, redistribution, and welfare provision. 1 By contrast to social democracy and socialism, American social liberalism has not challenged capitalist ownership or management in fundamental ways. Moreover, market liberalism has been well represented in both political parties, even though the Republican Party has been its primary carrier. Both regimes embrace liberal democratic rights (e.g., freedom of speech, assembly, religion), albeit with distinct twists, reflecting different ideologies as well as divergent political alliances and compromises (e.g., the Republican–Christian conservative pact). Each regime has dominated at different historical moments (e.g., compare the culture and policies of the Gilded Age with the Progressive Era or the Roaring Twenties and the New Deal). Hegemonic rule by one of the two regimes has tended to move overall political discourse in its direction and shape accordingly public beliefs about what is politically possible and what is not. Governing in the wake of the Johnsonian Great Society, for example, Republican “conservative” Richard Nixon, supported a minimum annual income, employed price controls, and presided over creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By contrast, in the aftermath of the Reagan Revolution, Democratic “liberal” Bill Clinton, supported welfare reform, cut the deficit,

Habermas and Green Political Thought: Two Roads Converging

Between the 19th and the mid-20th century, the environmental movement transformed American culture, forcing a rethinking of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that had long dominated political thinking toward an understanding of the need to protect and restore the balance between humans and nature. In 1900, there were only a few environmental movement organizations (EMOs), but by 2000, there were over 6,000 national and regional EMOs and over 20,000 local EMOs. What drove this phenomenal growth of EMOs? We examine a 100-year time series of EMO founding, showing that, in addition to the “legitimation-and-competition” effects of organizational density, EMO founding is facilitated by the discourse-creative activities of critical communities, objective threats in terms of air pollution, foundation giving, and powerful political allies in the presidency and Congress. Environmental discourses also legitimized and competed against one another, favoring “early risers” and preservationist discourse. Environmental mobilization needs to be understood in terms of the creation of new discursive frames that identify environmental problems, as well as objective environmental threats, resources, and political opportunities.

The great divide: understanding the role of media and other drivers of the partisan divide in public concern over climate change in the USA, 2001–2014

In a widely read article, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus critiqued the environmental movement for focusing on piecemeal technocratic solutions and failing to articulate a broader political vision, declaring it irrelevant if not already “dead.” To get off the defensive, they argue, it needs to reframe its solutions to global warming and related environmental problems by appealing to core progressive values and to reformulate itself as part of a larger progressive movement. This repackaging, they say, will create a broader coalition with a shared political vision and greater political power. There is much to be said for their critique of traditional technocratic environmentalism, much of which we agree with. However, we will argue, their focus on rhetorical reform without addressing other aspects of environmental strategy is logically flawed and also undermines their commitment to democratic values.

Environmentalism and Human Emancipation

This article focuses on the relationship between Critical Theory and ecological ethics. It defines this perspective and provides a description of its application to environmental ethics. Objections to the use of Critical Theory in environmental ethics and an overview of an alternative ecocentric approach developed by Robyn Eckersley follow. The third section responds to this critique, and argues that this alternative has profound theoretical problems. Specifically, it is based on a one-sided and antiquated notion of ecology, misrepresents the intellectual foundations of Critical Theory, and commits the naturalistic fallacy. It also encounters substantial practical concerns regarding its political acceptance, efficacy, and implementation into democratic political practices. Accordingly, there is little compelling intellectual force or empirical evidence to warrant its acceptance. The article concludes with an overview of the current efforts that are being made to integrate Critical Theory into environmental decision-making.