The First Step:
Our team members are Karli Uwaine and Heisman Hosoda. The first step we performed in order to complete the survey was taking the Pio Shuttle into downtown Portland. Karli completed two surveys and Heisman completed one. The people that Karli interviewed (one male and one female) ranked the importance of climate change very low because they believe that there are other problems that are far more important than climate change. The male that Heisman interviewed ranked the importance of climate change an 8 because he believed that it’s an issue that must be dealt with eventually, but not immediately. We then analyzed and created graphs comparing our data with the rest of the classes information. We finalized our graphs and compared our data to cross-national and US data on climate change public opinion.
Results:
General Importance of Climate Change:
Of the 166 people surveyed, the majority of the people ranked climate change above a 7, meaning that they value climate change and consider it an issue that must be dealt with.
Based on Location:
We split the data from the survey into two categories based on location so that we could compare the different opinions of individuals in both areas of Portland. The two categories were downtown Portland and the periphery of Portland. On average, people from the periphery of Portland ranked the importance of climate change as 8.42 while people from downtown Portland ranked it as an importance of 7.19.
Based on Gender:
From the data collected, males ranked climate change higher than females, although there wasn’t a significant difference in the mean (difference of 0.2). It was hard to get a good understanding of which gender seemed to value climate change more because the number of interviewees were different. There were more males than females that were interviewed.
Based on Race:
After looking at the different races of the people interviewed, the majority of people surveyed were white. It is difficult to trust the results because the population distribution for each race/ethnicity were mainly white interviewees. Aside from the white interviewees, the results show that Hispanic and Latino interviewees valued climate change the most. The ethnicity who ranked the importance of climate change the lowest was the Asian group, who averaged a little below 6. Out of all the people interviewed, each race considers climate change as an important issue that must be dealt with because the lowest ranking of importance was still above a 5.
Based on Perceived Age:
As we analyzed the results for the three age groups (under 30, 30-60, and over 60), we weren’t necessarily surprised by the results based off of what our interviewees told us. Out of all the people surveyed by our class in both the Portland downtown and periphery areas, the most people interviewed were in the under 30 age group and the least were 60 and older. The average score for the 60 and over age group was 8.25, the highest of all the age groups. The 30-60 age group had a mean of 6.79, the lowest, and the age group of under 30 had a mean score of 7.5. The analysis for these results aren’t necessarily very reliable because of the unequal number of people surveyed from each of the three age groups. We were surprised by the results because Karli’s interviewees told her that “the media makes climate change more than it is, like they exaggerate it. It’s an issue but I don’t think that we will be affected by it immediately. It’s important to prepare for it for the future, but we don’t have to worry about it right now.” Based off of this statement and our results, it is surprising to see that the people under 30 aren’t the ones who are most concerned about climate change when it will in turn affect them and their kids more than it will the people who are over 60.
Based on National and Cross National Data:
We compared our results to two different maps. Both are from Pew global which we linked below. The first map is of the greatest threats around the world. From the map, we can see that climate change (in blue) is seen as the top concern of threat around the world, right behind ISIS (in red). This data matches up with the data that we analyzed from the surveys taken because the majority of the interviewees ranked the importance of climate change above a 5. The second map talks about the percent of nations that view climate change as a serious problem. According to the 40 nations polled, the majority in all nations say that climate change is a serious problem and a global median of 54 percent believe that it is a very serious problem. Latin America and Africa are most concerned about climate change and people in countries with high per-capita levels of carbon emissions are less intensely concerned about climate change. The U.S. has the highest carbon emissions per-capita and it is among the least concerned about climate change.
Climate Change as a Threat Around the World
What the World Thinks About Climate Change
Conclusion:
This project allowed our team to experience the difficulties that environmentalists encounter while trying to tackle the debate on climate change. Obtaining information that is accurate and precise is nearly impossible because there are so many different areas where error can occur.
For example, the number of males interviewed greatly outweighed the number of females interviewed. Also, the amount of people interviewed per age group and race were not exactly the same. While the focus of this project was not on controlling who we interviewed or how many people we interviewed, it may have helped us see a stronger trend in our data if we had control over these variables. Also when individuals were asked about his or her take on climate change, we received a wide variety of answers. We believe that individuals’ opinions on climate change stem from their individual beliefs or their place of residency, not necessarily based on facts.
In general, the people of Portland value climate change as an important matter. Despite everything going on in the world, people still place great emphasis on solving climate change. What surprised our group was the fact that climate change is right behind ISIS as the greatest threat around the world. Overall, this assignment allowed our group to gain a better understanding of how complex the debate over climate change actually is and how far we still have to go before society can come to a conclusion about how to solve the issue on climate change.