Team members: Nicole Godbout, Lauren Walker, and Ben Carsner
Procedure
Climate change continues to be a hotly debated topic as many countries and corporations value profit more than the conservation and preservation of our planet. It is important to understand the reasoning and opinions of individuals and nations that form these debates. Our Intro to Environmental Studies class was assigned to survey the inhabitants of both downtown and the periphery area of Portland to find out what our community thought of climate change.
We began the process of gathering surveys by taking the bus to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. We approached random people who were standing/walking around the area and asked them to participate in a quick survey. If they said yes, we proceeded to briefly explain the project, before completing the survey. The questions included “if you compare climate change to other issues today, how important is it to you personally?” We then asked for their additional thoughts about climate change and for their zipcode, said thanks, and recorded observational information such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, the location the survey was conducted, and any other information we thought was important to provide. Each team member recorded at least one survey (we took five total). Our team headed back to campus after finishing the surveys. Within the next week, after most of the class had completed their survey requirements, we made a copy of the 103 data points and began to analyze and create graphs regarding people’s opinions on climate change and their demographics including gender, race, age, and location. Later in the week we finalized our graphs and compared our data to cross-national and US data on climate change public opinion.
Results
Of the 103 people surveyed, 81% of respondents ranked climate change a 7 or above when asked to compare climate change to other important issues.
On average, people from the periphery of Portland ranked climate change as 8.34 while people from the core of Portland ranked it as 7.36.
Females ranked climate change slightly higher than males (by 0.2) but there wasn’t a significant difference in the additional comments between genders.
Respondents perceived to be over 60 years old ranked climate change higher compared to other issues than the two other age groups. People perceived to be between 30 and 60 years old ranked climate change the lowest.
The overwhelming majority of respondents were perceived to be white (85 out of 104 total respondents) and white people ranked climate change slightly higher than any other race.
National Data
A 2017 polling survey conducted by Pew Research Center asked 1,502 telephone interviews to rank how important dealing with climate change should be for the Trump Administration and Congress in 2017. Around 72% of the respondents ranked climate change as a top priority to deal with or important but a lower priority to deal with. Assuming a 7 on our scale equates important but a lower priority to deal with, our results in Portland were similar to this national data, with 81% of respondents ranking climate change a 7 or above.
Another poll from Pew Research Center from May 2016 asked 4,563 people how important they thought climate change is. 74% of respondents found it to be a great deal or somewhat of a great deal, similar to our Portland data where 81% people ranked the importance of global climate change compared to other global issues as a 7 or above.
International Data
Our Portland survey data revealed that 81% of people find climate change to be one of the more important issues to them. Data from the United States as a whole was similar. However, when compared to other countries, the United States does not find global climate change to be a very serious problem.
It is important to note that some of the countries that produce the most greenhouse emissions and have largest ecological footprint, like the US and China, do not find global climate change to be a very serious problem.
Reasons for Differing Opinions
Both our survey in Portland and those conducted across the United States and internationally prove one thing- there is a wide range of opinion on climate change. There are many possible explanations for this and we analyzed age, race, gender, geographic location, and political ideology and affiliation in order to try and understand these opinions.
When analyzing our Portland responses by age group, responders over 60 had a significantly higher mean than the other age groups. While this generational gap could accurately represent this age group, it could also be explained by our data pool, which contained significantly fewer responses from the over 60 age group. The 30-60 age group had more than twice as many responses and the under 30 group had over three times the responses, which is likely why the mean average is lower.
The vast majority of people interviewed were white. White people generally made additional comments about climate change relating to the government’s role and influence on policy, while people of color tended to focus more on how climate change would impact other issues. Our survey suggested that white people narrowly ranked the importance of climate change higher than other races, however a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in June 2015 found that 39% of surveyed white people thought climate change was a very serious problem, compared to 54% of African Americans and 65% of Hispanics. Thus, compared to national data, our Portland data does not accurately reflect the United States population.
Though opinions on climate change range from person to person and among gender, our results did not find significant difference between the importance of climate change to men and women. The response mean of women was .2 higher than that of men which is similar to national data collected by the Pew Research Center wherein 50% of women called climate change a very serious problem compared to 42% of men.
Our survey did not ask for the ideologies or political party affiliations of the participants, but a survey by Pew Research Center found those who lean democrat/liberal are more likely to think that climate change is real and due to anthropogenic causes, than those who lean republican/conservative who are more likely to say there is not adequte evidence to support climate change.
Conclusion
Within our data, we were most surprised that people living in the Portland periphery ranked the importance of climate change higher than other issues than those who live in the downtown city center. This was surprising given that precincts in downtown Portland had greater support for Clinton in the Presidential race while precincts in the Portland periphery had greater support for Trump. Typically, democrats are more likely to acknowledge anthropogenic explanations for climate change and recognize the importance of actions to reduce climate change than republicans. However, our survey suggested different.
While conducting the surveys and analyzing our data, the “bubble” that we live in was very apparent. The opinions of survey participants did differ, but the majority of responders expressed the importance in addressing global climate change. If we conducted this survey in another part of Oregon, the United States, or the world, the results would most likely be different. Thus it is important to consider the limitations of such surveys given variables such as gender, age, race, socioeconomic class, and political ideology. This assignment brought a better understanding of the many reasons people disagree about climate change because of their identity and politics of location. The assignment left us with more questions than answers given the complexity of how opinions on climate change form.