Alannah Balfour & Cora Layman
Introduction
In recent years, there has been great debate surrounding the idea of climate change. The world has fought over whether climate change is real, and if so, what we as a society can do about it. The frustrating part of these climate change debates is that opinions are constantly changing on the issue depending on an individual’s or institution’s values, religion, economic status, and leadership, meaning that the world has never come to one conclusion on the matter. Looking at the arguments focused around climate change today, particularly in the US, we can note an increasingly heated debate between scientists, the government, and the people. The Trump Administration has held onto the idea that climate change is a hoax or of little importance, while scientific organizations such as the EPA and the US National Park Service as well as people around the country and world have aggressively fought back with facts and figures, explaining that climate change is an undeniable truth and an urgent one. It is important, with all of this happening in just the span of a few weeks, to look not only at a national or global scale, but a local one as well. Lewis and Clark Environmental Studies students have decided to interview a number of people from Portland, Oregon to get their opinion on the importance of climate change.
Procedure
Cora Layman and Alannah Balfour drove to Beaverton and the periphery of Multnomah county in order to complete four surveys documenting the attitude towards climate change in the area. We used dialogic communication to ask four people general questions provided by our instructor looking for detailed answers surrounding the topic. We asked how an individual would rank climate change on a scale (1-10) of personal importance compared to other issues in the world, and their thoughts about the current state of the issue and what can be done as a response both nationally and globally. We also recorded their zip code to compile with our peers for a comprehensive set of data in the Portland area. We interviewed one elderly couple, one teenage girl, and one middle-aged man. There were a total of 103 people surveyed that we will discuss.
Discussion
Figure 1: Histogram showing distribution of votes toward the importance of climate change importance of Portland, Oregon (Feb, 2017).
First, if we take a look at our Portland area results (Fig. 1), we can see the distribution is leaning towards the right. There is no one who marked climate change as absolutely of no importance to them (a one or zero on the scale), so everyone surveyed at least recognized that climate change was somewhere on the spectrum of importance. In fact, the largest group of voters can be found in the ten scale, meaning that climate change is the most important issue compared to other issues to over twenty-five people of the 103 people of various presumed age, gender, and racial background analyzed in this report.
Figure 2: Bar graph measuring the average female rating (7.6) versus male rating (7.6)
Figure 3: Circle graph comparing the number of females surveyed (50) versus males surveyed (53)
When looking at Figs. 2 and 3, we can note that there was roughly an equal number of women and men surveyed, and that both genders had the exact same average rate of importance of climate change. This indicates that there is no large differing in opinion on the matter of climate change between these two categories of male and female. Both genders seem to note that it has a fairly significant impact on their lives and on the lives of future generations, but it is not urgent enough to be ranked a ten. Some men and women also brought up the new administration when commenting on their ratings, one woman saying that it is “more on my radar now with the new administration” and a man saying that “it’s unfortunate that our president doesn’t value [climate change].”
Figure 3: Bar graph measuring the average ranking of the age groups of: under 30 (7.8), 30-60 (7.2), and over 60 (8.3).
Figure 4: Circle graph measuring the number of people under 30 surveyed (51), ages 30-60 (37), and over 60 (15).
When looking at Figs. 4 and 5, we can see that those under 30 and those over 60 appear to have marked climate change as being more significant to them on average than the middle aged Portland community. This is surprising, considering how the elderly tend to be more conservative in the United States (2014), but we may not have surveyed enough people to get a full idea on the opinion of the elderly in Portland (only 15 people over the age of 60 were surveyed). The result of the youth, however, is roughly similar to the average of the men and women surveyed, which may be because the highest number of people surveyed were under 30 (80 youth surveyed).
Figure 6: Bar graph measuring the average white rating (7.7) and the average minority rating (7.8).
Figure 7: Circle graph measuring the number of white people surveyed (86) vs. the minorities surveyed (17).
When looking at Figs. 6 and 7, it is hard to truly gauge the opinions of the minorities compared to those of white people. Our class only interviewed 17 people of color, and with Portland being one of the whitest cities in the country (2016), it is challenging to get the opinions on climate change from those of a variety of diverse backgrounds and cultures in the city. However, it does appear based on our survey that minorities tend to rate climate change as being of slightly higher importance on average than white people do, but again, this may be discounted considering the large number of white people surveyed and the small number of minorities surveyed skewing our results.
Figure 8: Bar graph measuring downtown Portland average rating (7.5) vs. the periphery of Portland average rating (5.8).
Figure 9: Circle graph comparing the number of people surveyed in downtown Portland (80) vs. the number of people surveyed in the periphery of Portland (23).
When looking at Figs. 8 and 9, the people in downtown Portland had a heavier distribution of ratings towards the higher end of the scale. This resulted in the average being 7.5, whereas in the Portland periphery the average was 5.8, This is the most significant difference observed by us of (1.8 ranking difference) between two or more compared categories. This lower rating in the Portland periphery may be because of the fact that more people voted conservative in the 2016 elections in those areas than they did downtown (2016), and conservatives may be more inclined to listen to the Trump Administration declaring climate change fake and not important to the country. However, like the comparison among races, this data may be discounted, because far more people were surveyed downtown (80 people) than in the periphery of Portland (23 people).
No one surveyed in Portland ranked climate change of no importance to them, and all declared climate change to be real and problematic, which suggests that although it may not have been the most important issue for many people, climate change is still a place of concern in the mind of the Portland community. It may be that we do not so much disagree about climate change, but that we disagree on how concerned about how to deal with it.
“Climate change is something that everyone is responsible for.”
On a comparative national level, individuals were surveyed on how dangerous temperature change associated with climate change is for the environment (2010). Out of 1,325 responses, 80.5% rated such change as ‘somewhat dangerous,’ ‘very dangerous,’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ to the environment. Out of this 80.5%, 39% believed it is ‘very dangerous.’ This national data reflects a similar view to our class data, which correlates to a large portion of the surveyed population believing that climate change is of both anthropogenic and ecological concern. Whereas certainly in the national survey individuals responded with climate change being of no danger to the environment, it was a negligible percentage; however, in our data, there was no responses that suggested people did not believe in climate change. Most of the time, the low rankings were because of a lack of knowledge on the subject. For example, one man responded to our survey saying, “I don’t know much about [climate change]”, and another man stated that he is “not well educated on it and that it does not affect him personally”. This suggests, surprisingly considering the current political response to dismissing climate change, that nationally climate change is viewed as an important issue to citizens, and locally climate change is an important, although not necessarily well understood, issue to the city of Portland.
The International Social Survey Programme (2010) measured global attitudes to environmental protection, covering a variety of topics including where environmentalism rates among current issues. This parallels our question posed to the Portland community, except it covered cross-cultural boundaries from Argentina to South Africa. The majority of surveys were conducted using face-to-face interviews or a self-completion questionnaire. With over 44,138 responses from 32 countries, the concerns about the environment was ranked 4 out of 8 with access to health care, education, and crime prevention ranking of higher personal importance. It was ranked above immigration, the economy, terrorism, and poverty. According to our limited Portland data, it would suggest that the local community places a higher emphasis on environmental issues than the global community. It represents similar data to the GSS Data national survey. This range suggests that perhaps the Portland community is more privileged towards health care, education, and crime rates which allows climate change and the environment to take precedent in the parts of Portland surveyed. However, from all surveys studied we can at minimum acknowledge the need for climate change discussion.
Conclusion
Although this was not as comprehensive of a survey as we had hoped, we gathered basic ideas that will be able to fuel us towards future research. Based off of data collected from our Portland, national, and global surveys from ISSP and GSS, we know that citizens tend to acknowledge the existence of climate change. However, there is a varying degree of concern with the matter of climate change and how important it is compared to other issues. It would be interesting to look into this level of concern more in the future, particularly with groups from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. From our research, we have begun to question whether being highly concerned about climate change is a privilege. Does Portland care and acknowledge climate change because it is primarily white, and white people do not have the same concerns as minorities (e.g., safety)? Do black youth care as much about climate change as white youth, or do they care more about fighting the racism they endure throughout their lives? Do people from poorer countries care more about food being provided to them than they do than the idea of dangerous climate change? On the other hand, is it a privilege to be able to dismiss climate change? Do the highly wealthy, such as members of the Trump administration and the governments of first world countries, dismiss climate change more readily than the citizens of middle and poorer classes because they are not as dependent on climate for survival? We are highly interested in doing more comprehensive and analytical surveys in the future on a local scale with more range in diversity, age, and economic standing to help us in beginning to answer some of our newfound questions. For now, we understand that people on a global level are acknowledging climate change and how it does and will continue to have an impact. Climate change and concern about environmentalism is a universal experience and as such, demands universal discussion regardless of disagreement.