Overview/Procedure:
To obtain a better understanding of the public opinion of climate change, we (Tallie Steiner and Eden Smith) went to Pioneer Square in downtown Portland to survey people’s opinions. We arrived at Pioneer Square at around three o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, January 27th and immediately identified an older white couple, one man and one woman, sitting on a bench eating some almonds who we thought would be friendly and open to taking our survey. At first they weren’t sure if they could take our survey because they were from Connecticut, though as soon as we said we were conducting a survey about climate change, they perked up and seemed more intrigued about our questions. We then asked them the questions on the class google survey using our phones and then asked them if they had any additional comments. The woman, who gave climate change an importance rating of 10/10, said that it was a very important issue and that everyone should do something to help, to which the man nodded in agreement. The next person we wanted to survey was a mom of Asian decent sitting on a bench with her daughter, although upon approaching her she seemed like she didn’t fully understand what we were doing and declined the offer to participate. We next approached an older white man sitting by the train stop and he was interested in participating in our survey, as long as he didn’t miss the train. This man, too, seemed very passionate about climate change, giving it an importance rating of 10/10. When asked to provide an additional comment, he stated that although he was near 70 years old, climate change is still a very important issue to him and everyone else. Additionally, he added that he served on some type of energy committee in the midwest. Having recorded this information and submitted it to the class google survey, we then made our way back to the Pio.
General Distribution and Means:
Total Average: 7.67
Analysis:
Overall, out of the total 131 people that the class surveyed, 35 people, or 26.7% of responses gave climate change an extreme importance rating of 10. The average rating that people in downtown Portland gave climate change was a 7.8, whereas the average rating that people in the Portland periphery gave was 7.2. Additionally, amongst those surveyed, men and women gave generally the same rating, 7.6, whereas those who were of an other/unknown gender gave it a rating of 6. When we broke up the responses based on age, we found that those under 30 rated climate change as an importance of 7.8, those in the category of 30-60 gave it a rating of 7.2, and those over 60 gave it a rating of 8.2. This is interesting in that those who might seem most out of touch with climate issues actually appeared to be most concerned. While also considering the variation amongst responses from different races/ethnicities, the data showed that those with an unknown race/ethnicity gave it the lowest rating of importance at 6.5, Asian people gave it a rating of 7.4, White people gave a rating of 7.6, Black people of 8.1, and Hispanic/Latino gave it the overall highest average of 8.6. This data collectively shows that the majority of those surveyed found climate change to be of somewhat importance, though the graph of the overall data was skewed towards being very important.
When we compared our class data to national and cross national data, we found some similarities and some differences. When 1325 U.S. citizens were asked if global climate change is a very serious problem, somewhat serious, not too serious or not a problem, 21.5% thought that it was a very serious problem (GSS). In order to compare our class data both nationally and cross nationally we set the rating of 8-10 to be equivalent to the category listing “Very serious.” From our class data we calculated that 60% of people surveyed in the PDX area gave climate change a rating between 8 and 10 (very serious). Comparing this data to the overall national percentage of 21.5%, we found that the Portland area appears to have a greater concern for climate change.
Comparing this 60%– the percentage of people in the PDX area rating climate change as a very serious problem– to several major countries including Canada (with 51% of people rating climate change as very serious), Britain (41% of people rating climate change as very serious), China (18%), Australia (43%), we noticed that Portland has a fairly high concern for climate change compared to these other nations. In contrast, when we compared this 60% to several other nations, most notably in the Central America and South America (Brazil–86%, Chile– 77%, Peru–75%), we found that these countries have a higher concern for climate change than observed in Portland (PewResearchCenter).
Conclusions:
Based on what we observed above, something that we found surprising was that overall, people in countries in Central/South America rated climate change as being of very high importance as well as people of Hispanic/Latino identity in the Portland area. Based on a brief discussion of Latino/Hispanic concern about climate change in class, we were somewhat aware of their heightened concern for it, though after observing and comparing the data upfront, it seems to stand out even more. Concerning how this assignment affected our understanding of why we disagree about climate change, we thought overall that this assignment has enhanced our understanding. Before looking at the data, we felt that those within the downtown Portland area would give climate change a higher rating as compared to those within the Portland periphery. This suspicion was confirmed, although the difference of concern was not as drastic as we thought it would be. Additionally, before the assignment we were unsure of how people of different races/ethnicities would rate climate change and this data shows that those who are black and hispanic/latino see climate change as having an overall higher importance than white people do. In all, this assignment has shown that geographic, as well as racial/ethnic variation, play a crucial role in the debate on climate change.
Image Citation: here