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About the Contributors About the Contributors Robert Brulle is professor of sociology and environmental science in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University. His research focuses on the US environmental movement, critical theory, and public participation in environmental policy making. He is the author of over 50 articles in these areas, and is the author of Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective, as well as coeditor, with David Pellow, of Power, Justice, and the Environment. Dennis Chong is chair of and professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California. He studies American national politics and has published extensively on issues of decision making, political psychology, and collective action. He is the author of Rational Lives, a study of values, group identification, and conflict over social change. He also wrote Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement, a theoretical study of the dynamics of collective action as well as a substantial study of the American civil rights movement and the local and national politics that surrounded it. Professor Chong’s current research on the influence of information and framing in competitive democratic contexts has received several national awards, including the American Political Science Association’s Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Prize. An active member of the profession, Professor Chong has been elected to the executive council of the APSA, and he is coeditor of Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology, a book series published by Cambridge University Press. Lauren Copeland is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her PhD in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. Her research examines how changing citizenship norms, values, and communication technologies affect political behavior and public opinion. She has published articles on these topics in Political Studies, American Politics Research, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and New Media & Society. xii Changing Climate Politics Kirsten H. Engel is professor of law at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona, where she teaches and researches in the areas of environmental and administrative law with a particular emphasis on federalism and the role of the courts in fostering policy responses to climate change. Engel is the coauthor of an environmental law textbook and numerous book chapters and articles. Her work appears in journals such as the UCLA Law Review Discourse, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Ecology Law Quarterly. Prior to joining the law faculty at the University of Arizona, Engel held appointments within academia and in the public and nonprofit sectors, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, and visiting and permanent professorships at Harvard, Vanderbilt, and Tulane law schools. Diana Forster is a doctoral candidate in American government at the University of Florida and a research fellow with the Center for Talent Innovation. Her research focuses on the role of religion in American political behavior and on the use of direct democratic policy-making mechanisms within the US states. Her dissertation explores the influence of religious context on political behavior and policy outcomes. Rachel M. Krause is an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. She received her PhD in public affairs from Indiana University in 2011. Her research examines the adoption, implementation, and diffusion of innovative policies by local governments and focuses primarily on municipal sustainability and climate protection initiatives. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Studies, Energy Policy, and Review of Policy Research. Thomas Princen is associate professor of natural resource and environmental policy at the University of Michigan. He explores issues of social and ecological sustainability, including principles for sustainability, the language and ethics of resource use, and the transition out of fossil fuels. Princen is the author of Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order (2010/2013), author of The Logic of Sufficiency (2005), and lead editor of Confronting Consumption (2002). The last two books were awarded the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for the “best book in the study of international environmental problems.” Princen is also coeditor of The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift (MIT Press, 2012), coauthor of Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global (1994), and author of Intermediaries in International Conflict (1992/1995). Barry G. Rabe is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Chair of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where he also directs the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP). Rabe is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a fellow of the National Chapter 5 Explaining Public Conflict and Consensus on the Climate Dennis Chong As media attention to climate change increased dramatically in the past 25 years, so did public concern. But the problem has remained a relatively low priority for the American public despite grave warnings from scientists about the conse- quences of inaction. Furthermore, a scientific consensus on the risks of climate change has not prevented sharp divisions of public opinion reflecting partisan and ideological polarization on the issue among political leaders. In this chapter, I discuss the changing state of public attitudes toward climate change since the issue entered public consciousness in the 1980s. During this period, the public has been exposed to ongoing debate on a complex scientific topic, with opposing sides providing contrasting interpretations of evidence and competing policy recommendations. The divergent perspectives represented in this debate have fractured the public. Whether these social and political differences can be bridged to enable action on policy solutions is one of the central political issues of our time. In addressing this question, I evaluate attitudes, beliefs, and policy preferences, and I provide a model for explaining the dynamics of conflict and consensus. I also discuss the impact of scientific information, the economy, and the effects of fram- ing on opinions. We will see that on the broad themes of climate change—its causes, the views of experts, the need for policy action—a plurality or majority of the public generally gets it right, in the sense of being on the same side as the sci- entific authorities. There are also favorable trends suggesting that knowledge of the effects of human action on the atmosphere and climate, although not sophisti- cated, have progressed significantly compared to past generations and that skepti- cism toward climate change will be harder to sustain among new generations that have a stronger environmental consciousness. Explaining Public Conflict and Consensus on the Climate 111 Although I focus on the state of public opinion, I will also emphasize that the obstacles to significant government action transcend shortcomings of public atten- tion. An active conservative countermovement has attempted to reduce public concern over climate change, and the perpetuation of a business–environment dichotomy has hindered policy solutions. Achieving a more general public consen- sus on the issue requires both greater elite leadership on the status and implications of climate change and creative policies that reconcile competing values and eco- nomic interests underlying partisan and ideological polarization. Consensus and Conflict Over the course of the last century, there have been many significant shifts in pub- lic assumptions about the relationship between human actions and the climate. Scientists were already exploring in the late 1800s the idea that industrial produc- tion of CO2 could gradually warm the earth’s atmosphere and affect the climate. By the middle of the 20th century, people had become increasingly conscious of the capacity of humans to alter and disrupt nature. Humans were no longer regarded to be merely in thrall of nature; they could significantly change the envi- ronment around them, especially through pollution of the atmosphere and water.1 In the 1950s, scientists began to warn of the effects of CO2 on the earth’s climate and developed a reliable method to measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which produced disturbing evidence of steadily increasing levels. Mounting concern about CO2 emissions and global warming in the 1970s factored into energy policy discussions and the 1980 Clean Air Act, as scientists testified to Congress about the dire consequences of inaction. Early climate models were used to forecast how global temperatures would rise if CO2 concentrations continued to increase, leading to potentially catastrophic outcomes. In 1988, global warming was featured on the front page of the New York Times, with a report on testimony by James Hansen (head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Stud- ies at the time) to a congressional hearing that climate change was almost certainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions and that its effects would be measurable within the next decade. The unusually
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