Trini Susuico, Rachel Applebaum, Ashley Aguiar, Julia Chavez
Procedure:
Our mission was to find out how different people about how important climate change is to them on a scale from 1 to 10, one being the lowest importance and 10 being the highest importance. We walked around the streets of downtown Portland as well as the suburbs of Portland to survey random people about their thoughts on climate change and how important it was to them. We approached different people, asked them their opinions on climate change, and took their number ranking of importance. After all our surveys were done, we compiled our results and analyzed what the public opinion might be on climate change in the greater Portland area. We then broke our data down and compared the ranking of importance to different variables such as ethnicity/race, age, location, and gender.
PDX Results:
This graph is the ranking of importance on the scale of 10 to 1 by the number of people per race/ethnicity. The tick mark on the very left of the graph on the x-axis is the highest ranking of importance with the tick mark on the very right of the x-axis being of lowest ranking. Each color represents a certain race/ethnicity and the each bar shows how many people of that race/ethnicity voted for a certain number in ranking.
This graph is the ranking of importance on the scale of 10 to 1 by the number of people per gender. The tick mark on the very left of the graph on the x-axis is the highest ranking of importance with the tick mark on the very right of the x-axis being of lowest ranking. Each color represents a certain gender and the each bar shows how many people of that gender voted for a certain number in ranking.
This graph represents the number of people by the rank of importance relating to climate change. The red bars represent the outskirts of Portland and the blue bars represent the downtown Portland area. The x-axis goes from left to right with 2 being of lowest importance and 10 being of highest importance.
This graph represents the number of people per age by the rank of importance of climate change. The blue bars represent people under 30, the red bars represent people between ages 30 and 60, and the orange bars represent people over 60.
National Comparison:
From looking at our survey that canvassed the PDX area, including downtown and the peripheral, we deduced that the range is significant spanning from one to ten in prioritization. This shows the large divide of opinions just in one city in one state. We noticed that much of the median lay within the range of 6-8 and some repetitions of answers remaining in the nine or ten responses of importance. This shows that the residents of Portland are generally concerned about climate change, and in fact place high importance on action in reference to other problems plaguing the nation. Generally people that answered with fives or below commented that they are either not affected by it and are skeptical about the validity about the claims since they cannot see it firsthand. Conversely, people who prioritized as six or above concluded that action needed to be taken but were generally unclear as to how to change or make reform.
As for the range of public opinion on climate change importance, it shows a wide range of the whole United States. This deduction was based on Republicans versus Democrats concerning different aspects of climate change including its seriousness, affectation of current and future generations, and the reduction of greenhouse gasses. This range was large around forty-eight percent regarding its seriousness and only twenty-nine regarding its effect on generations and personal effects. Therefore it is fair to say that the range of opinions is not surprising considering that the same diversity of conclusions is reflected amongst the United States.
International Comparison:
As compared to national and world averages regarding concerns of climate change, we would conclude that the PDX matches up with Latin America where concern about climate change is regarded as important and must be acted upon in the near future. In fact seventy-seven percent of residents of Latin America claim that climate is harming people right now, compared to the US where only forty-one percent claimed that it affects people at the present moment, which is the second lowest when compared to countries and continents.
The fact that the numbers were based on prioritization of climate change in relation to other problems shows that many residents of Portland feel it is a pressing issue that must be pushed to the forefront of policymaking, thus they belief that climate change is affecting both current and future generations which contradicts the national averages where little concern is attributed to both current and future generations.
Analysis:
Based on the graphs, there seems to be a mutual sentiment on the importance of climate change between Males and Females. Although the data might be a bit skewed due to there being more males surveyed than women, the sentiment towards climate change is that it is fairly important. Most of the data leans towards an importance of a 7-10 for both genders which shows that both genders seem to agree with the fact that climate change is important.
Most of the data that was gathered within the city of Portland, whether it was downtown or the periphery, can not actually be used for this particular study. Although the responses may correlate, the data is skewed due to the fact that Portland is a predominantly white city (around more than 75% of the population being white with the rest being minorities). Since the data is skewed, the data is not accurately portraying whether race affects who believe in the importance.
While browsing our data of the PDX area there appeared to be a trend of the participants ages sixty and above that either prioritized their concern for climate change or completely did not. This can stem from the fact that this generation differs from the class’. A different generation can be highlighted by different issues at the time, where climate change contained little importance and the influence of science highly debated. Their drastically divergent opinions could result from many aspects including their demographics, where they lived and other factors which were not accounted for. Many participants under the age of thirty marginalized cohesively around seven to ten in importance, this shows that climate change prioritization is popular amongst the younger generation. This makes sense considering the fact that many young generations have been introduced to the problems climate change creates at a young age. As for thirty to sixty, their opinions spanned the entire range, but had a slight leaning towards higher prioritization. This shows that this mixed age range causes a diverse range of opinions since it includes both the younger and older generations; a sort of crossroads. According to the comments, many people who put climate change as low on priorities considered it just that, other issues at hand are in fact more pressing for their perspective of what is important. For them, issues such as poverty, women’s rights, and other political issues call for much more immediate action when compared to climate change. This is outlined by the book Why We Disagree About Climate Change where Hulme claimed in chapters six and seven that people generally fear issues that they can formally see and interpret for themselves. The actual communication of the effects and risks of climate change can be blurred by politics, dramatic Hollywood produced movies, and the ambiguity of science. Issues such as poverty can readily be seen at the present moment, thus jarring certain emotions and eventually a call to action. The problem with climate change is that it is not visually expressed or felt by the general population, where some comments from our poll reflect that some participants suggest that they cannot feel the temperature rising since winters are still cold. The only transcendence of the climate change is the melting of polar ice caps and the destruction of coral reefs. Although this is common knowledge and is a visual representation of climate change’s impact, the large geographic and personal disconnection of these impacts results in less concern and thus lower prioritization.
Another reason lies in the distrust or uncertainty of science. Some comments from our survey said their response can be attributed to science and how it can be questioned and how the claims are either vague or constantly changing. It is hard for the population to accept that climate change science varies in its claims because of the many factors that need to be considered in order to come to a cohesive conclusion. Many people are used to cold hard facts that are often associated with science when in fact all scientific results are interpreted by a scientist allowing for subjectivity from that standpoint. The interpretation of scientific results and their importance lies in the society’s values and political and economic concerns. This is dependent on societies which is clearly shown by the global differences of the data.
As for the range concerning the PDX downtown versus the PDX peripheral, downtown participants had a trend around the upper end of prioritization and the peripheral had a large range but leaned to the upper, this shows that generally the PDX area is in fact climate conscious and calls for action of policy making and lifestyle changes that are essential to the reduction of climate change. This brings us to another hot debate topic. It is considered difficult to find a successful way to slow the effects of climate change. In fact, some comments of the people who had low numbers stated that there is no direct solution. Even participants who had higher numbers concluded different manners of acting upon climate change. This highlights one of the reasons why people disagree. Since there is no direct, concrete solution to this dilemma presented, people find it fruitless or difficult to change and modify. This causes problems or issues that have a defined solution to become the top priority.
Conclusion:
What surprised us was that even in an area where most people believe in climate change there were still people who were so set in not believing in climate change. In the age category, we expected the people above 60 to mostly disagree with/not find climate change important, it surprised us that there was a good amount of people above 60 that did actually agree with/did find climate change important. Something else that surprised us was the number of males who ranked climate change as a 10. After doing this assignment, it is clear that there is always going to be someone that disagrees with the majority opinion. If we want to change that person’s mind, we have to do so through educating them on climate change and perhaps the statistics of the opinions of the area they live in.