By Mamelang Memela and Nhi Ho
Overview/Procedure:
In Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Mike Hulme discusses various factors that account for differing views and approaches on climate change. Many of those factors include the various opinions people have about the nature of climate change and its relationship with politics, the economy, religions, development, etc. In order to investigate these different views at a smaller, more local scale, the ENVS 160 class conducted a public opinion survey in various locations in Portland to find out how people regard the importance of climate change.
Our group volunteered to go to Gresham to conduct the survey. We took the Max train to Gresham Central Transit Center, and walked around the station since it was where most people conjugated. We first approached an African-American young lady of about 20 years-old. When asked how important climate change is to her, she gave us a rating of 8 out of 10. Although she was hesitant to give further comments about her answer, she acknowledged that climate change was a real problem that needed to be addressed. We then approached a white gentleman of about 40-50 years old. To our question, he gave a 5 out f 10 rating for the importance of climate change. He also concurred that climate change is a real phenomenon. However, regarding whether it was a problem, he answered:
The Earth has existed for a long time even before we got here. It takes care of itself. We can’t change anything.
There’s definitely a change of tone here in terms of this man’s opinion on the evaluative and instrumental questions about climate change. Afterwards, we spotted an African-American couple and decided to approach them. They were both probably in their twenties. The boyfriend was totally disinterested in our survey, while the girlfriend answered us after some hesitance. She gave a 10 out 10 for her rating of the importance of climate change. When prompted, she also agreed that climate change was definitely real, yet she showed no other interest in elaborating or commenting on the subject. She also did not know about what kinds of effort were being implemented to reduce the advancing of climate change. The last person we approached was a middle-aged lady of possibly Hispanic/Latino descend. She seemed to not understand what we were trying to ask therefore refused to participate in the survey.
Summary of survey data
After drawing a distribution graph of our data, there is clearly a higher tendency of people answering between 7-10 on the ratings (Fig.1). The most popular answer is 10 (27%) and 8 (21%), while no one answered 1 (Fig.2).
The average ratings for each of the categories: gender, age, race and area are presented below:
Gender
There seems to be very little variations between the ratings of different gender groups since both female and male have an average rating of 7.7 (Table 1). Although the gender group of “Others” has a slightly lower rating, it might not be a good representative of the group since only one individual categorized in this group was interviewed.
[table]
Gender, Average
Female, 7.7
Male, 7.7
Others, 6
[/table]
Table 1. Average ratings by Perceived Gender
Age
Amongst the age groups, there is only a slight difference between the average ratings given by individuals under 30 and individual of 30-60 years old. More notable is the significantly higher average rating given by individuals of over 60 years old (Table 2).
[table]
Age, Average
Under 30, 7.8
30-60, 7.3
Over 60, 8.3
[/table]
Table 2. Average ratings by Perceived Age
Race
There are more obvious differences between the average ratings of different ethnic groups. Much like Mike Hulme hypothesizes and statistics in his book, individuals from Hispanic descend generally give the highest rating for the importance of climate change to them- an average of 8.6(Table 3). While other unlisted groups give the lowest rating of 6.5 followed by Asians with 7.4.
[table]
Race, Average
White, 7.7
Black, 8.1
Hispanic/Latino, 8.6
Asian, 7.4
Others, 6.5
[/table]
Table 3. Average ratings by Perceived Ethnicity
Area
There is only a small difference between the average ratings from individuals from the downtown area compares to the periphery area of Portland. However, this might be due to Portland being a generally “green” city that there is little disparity between the two areas.
[table]
Area, Average
PDX Downtown, 7.8
PDX Periphery, 7.3
[/table]
Table 4. Average ratings by Area in Portland
Evaluation of data
The range of opinion in PDX on climate change varied in relative extremes. Many of the survey participants either thought climate change was a pressing issue or it wasn’t important to them personally or there were other more important issues. Despite these two extremes, of those who did not believe climate was an important issue the level of importance as seen in the results we analysed was not below 2. There were also people who gave it a rating of 8 and did not think it was important compared to other issues such as Women’s Rights. Although the majority of people regarded it as one of the priority issues currently facing our generation, the few who did not were noted to be not as educated and/or interested in the survey. Another trend we observed in opinion was the disbelief among strong believers towards deniers. Other topics that were raised included the concerns new administration’s attitude towards climate change, concerns over the disestablishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the connections between climate change and other issues such as hunger as mentioned by one of the participants.
Compared to the national results of similar surveys by the Pew and Roper Centers collaborations, of those surveyed about climate change only 40% considered it to be a “very big problem” problem with 14% saying it’s “not a problem at all”. This is higher compared to our survey where 27% of people considered it to be a serious problem (a rating of 10), and an overall of 83% who consider it as a problem (assuming that a rating of 6 and above means that the participant considers climate change as a problem). This is certainly surprising for a well-known “green” city as Portland. It is important to note that this national survey was not collecting data solely about climate change but a wide range of issues and this was one of the only questions that addressed climate change in its own context without asking to rank it amongst other issues, therefore might account for the differences in the results. However when participants were asked about climate change in the context of other international issues facing the USA, 52% of those surveyed said it was a major issue. This number dropped further when in a survey conducted at the beginning of this year, when asked if climate change was a top priority for the new administration only 38% of participants considered the issues a top priority. This statistics is more comparable to out 27% of people giving a rating of 10, even though Portland still underperforms by this standards. This was further explained by the rankings where other issues such as terrorism, education, health care costs, the economy, employment and education ranked above climate change in terms of priorities from the new administration. The Pew and Roper Center results illustrate how focussing on climate change alone may not give representative results as confirmed by some of our participants who although believed in the importance of climate change, saw other issues as being prominent as well. However they both agreed that there is a wide range in opinions towards the importance of climate change which may stem from the socio-economic standing of participants, their political views, their level of education or a combination of all these factors and more.
Conclusion
Based on the results we analysed one of the things we found most surprising was in the cases of some participants, although they ranked climate change and other environmental issues highly, they believed there were other more important issues (i.e- Women’s Rights). And also compared to the national results there was a vast difference in the rating of importance of climate change when compared to other issues such as terrorism, the state of the economy, education and employment. This may indicate that issues may seem more important when observed in isolation as opposed to when they are compared to others which may or may not impact people’s opinions and the extent to which results are representative of their views. Whilst doing this assignment we realised that climate change shouldn’t be assessed as a singular issue as it affects many aspects of other issues in society. And one of the most vital tools people will have to utilise to combat it is education as many people appeared to be blaming others’ without considering their circumstances. As noted by Mike Hulme, climate change is an issue that is dependent on where one views it from, whether that be an economic, religious, scientific or economic perspective. To a person who lives on a low income, climate change may not be as important as minimum wage, however if you educate that person on how a green economy may impact them, they may be more likely to support any petitions to combat climate change.