David Ropeik brings to light a pragmatic point about the psychological challenges to new nuclear power deployment caused by fear of nuclear power:

But, as is often the case with risk perception, emotional filters, more than the facts, determine how afraid we are, or aren't.

Whether this is rational or irrational, right or wrong, is irrelevant. It is, inescapably, how it is. But we must recognize that our response to risk can pose a danger all by itself. Our fear of nuclear power has led to energy economics that favor coal and oil for electricity, at great cost to human and environmental health. Particulate pollution from fossil fuels kills tens of thousands of Europeans every year, and CO2 emissions fuel a potentially calamitous shift in global climate.

No amount of education or good communication can get around this. Subjective risk perception is hard-wired into our architecture and chemistry. What governments can do is to learn what psychological research has established: our perceptions, as real as they are and as much as they must be respected in a democracy, can create their own perils.
With that understanding, government risk assessment can account not only for the facts, but also for how we feel about them and how we behave. That way, we can reduce conflict over nuclear power and other risk issues, and foster wiser and more productive policies for public and environmental health.

In an essay at YaleE360, Roger Pielke Jr., a Breakthrough Senior Fellow and author of the recently released book, "The Climate Fix," explains the "iron law of climate policy" and what it suggests about the way forward on national and international climate and energy policy.

Here's an excerpt from Pielke's essay:

When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out every time. Climate policies should flow with the current of public opinion rather than against it, and efforts to sell the public on policies that will create short-term economic discomfort cannot succeed if that discomfort is perceived to be too great. Calls for asceticism and sacrifice are a nonstarter.

The "iron law" thus presents a boundary condition on policy design that is every bit as limiting as is the second law of thermodynamics, and it holds everywhere around the world, in rich and poor countries alike. It says that even if people are willing to bear some costs to reduce emissions (and experience shows that they are), they are willing to go only so far...

To succeed, any policies focused on decarbonizing economies will necessarily have to offer short-term benefits that are in some manner proportional to the short-term costs. In practice, this means that efforts to make dirty energy appreciably more expensive will face limited success.
...

The unavoidable reality is that policy makers and those they represent are committed to sustaining economic growth, bringing populations out of poverty, and expanding access to energy. Emissions reduction goals will not be achieved by policies that seek to stimulate innovation by constricting, much less by reducing, economic activity.

Continue reading "YaleE360: Pielke's "Iron Law" of Climate Policy " »

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins

Updated 8/9/10. See below...

Seemingly inspired by the death of cap and trade, over at the Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan has tied together two interesting threads of conversation -- "Waiting on Innovation" and "Why Not?" -- that deal with the issues of energy innovation and energy taxes.

Highlighted in "Why Not?" the Economist's Ryan Avent is on to something when he suggests a $5 per barrel petroleum tax since it could generate about $40 billion in revenue annually. But to suggest, as Avent does, that the tax should rise by $5 each year with the objective of forcing consumers to drive less or purchase more fuel-efficient cars is a strategy that risks falling into the same political trap that ultimately ensnared cap and trade.

Continue reading "Talking Energy Innovation at the Daily Dish" »

The majority of Americans do believe that Earth's climate is warming and they want the government to take action, according to Stanford Professor Jon Krosnick and his Political Psychology Research Group, but they still don't want to pay higher taxes. These findings echo Breakthrough's own social values research demonstrating strong public support for large-scale federal investment in clean energy R&D and greater support for carbon limits when they are coupled with policies, like public investment, that make clean energy cheaper.

Krosnick writes in the New York Times:

Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business's emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or 60 percent -- but 76 percent. Large majorities opposed taxes on electricity (78 percent) and gasoline (72 percent) to reduce consumption. But 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power. And huge majorities favored government requiring, or offering tax breaks to encourage, each of the following: manufacturing cars that use less gasoline (81 percent); manufacturing appliances that use less electricity (80 percent); and building homes and office buildings that require less energy to heat and cool (80 percent). Thus, there is plenty of agreement about what people do and do not want government to do.

Continue reading "Public Still Believes in Climate Change " »

Cross posted at The Real Ewbank.

By Breakthrough Fellow, Leigh Ewbank

At the weekend, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed called for increased direct action campaigning to encourage governments to act on climate change. "What we really need is a huge social 60s-style catalystic, dynamic street action," said Nasheed in the Guardian.

If the people in the US wish to change, it can happen. In the 60s and 70s, they've done that.

President Nasheed emerged from the last year's Copenhagen Climate Conference with considerable clout among climate change campaigners, and rightly so. In the process of drawing attention to the plight of his homeland, the Maldives, a chain of small islands threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges, Nasheed became a leading voice for the vulnerable and poor in the international negotiations. Nasheed has since received several awards for his commendable efforts.

The Maldivian President's comments will no doubt be music to the ears of some climate advocates in Australia, however, the merits of such an approach should be carefully considered. Is direct action likely to be as effective for climate change as it was for social issues in the 1960s? Is Nasheed's optimism that renewed grassroots action will compel governments to implement effective climate policies well-founded?

Continue reading "Direct Action on Climate Change: Successful Tactic or Green Nostalgia?" »

Climategate and Climate McCarthyism are both symptomatic of efforts to narrow the public debate. For twenty years these efforts have backfired. Narrowing the policy debate has fed political polarization, making political action increasingly difficult.

Now, heavy-handed efforts to narrow the scientific debate have seriously damaged the credibility of climate science. In simplistically imagining, first, that climate science could speak with a single voice and, second, trump all other considerations about how to deal with a complicated technological, economic, environmental and social problem, hyper-partisan environmental advocates and sympathetic scientists have set back efforts to address global warming.

Happily, other prominent climate scientists and researchers are beginning to speak out against the bad behavior by other climate scientists in ClimateGate.

Continue reading "TIME Magazine Says "Climate McCarthyism Must Stop"" »

Despite years of campaigning, documentaries, increasingly apocalyptic narratives and supposedly landmark climate and energy legislation awaiting Senate consideration, a recent Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll shows the majority of the public still ranks climate change last among important issues that affect the way it votes and ranks the economy before all else, even government spending.

According to Politico:

As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45 percent rated the economy as the most important issue in deciding their vote if the congressional election were held today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending, 20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent ranked climate change as the top issue.

This finding isn't new by any stretch. But it is significant news, given the heated debate on climate and energy policy that has passed through the House and is ongoing in the Senate.

Continue reading "Politico Poll Shows Climate Still Ranks Dead Last Among Voter Concerns" »

American climate policy advocates should watch our neighbor to the north closely. With social and political values not too distant from our own and an economic makeup broadly similar, Canada's experiments with climate policy - particularly carbon pricing schemes - offer a real-world laboratory we would be wise not to ignore. While Canadians are broadly supportive of actions to address climate change, proposals at both the federal and provincial levels to establish a price on global warming pollution have met with difficulty. We covered the failure of the national Liberal Party's "Green Shift" carbon tax proposal in the October 2008 elections here, and have watched closely as British Columbia battles over their controversial, first-in-North American carbon tax system. Now, social values research firm Environics (the sister firm to our colleagues at American Environics) has new research findings that shed light on the difficulties facing 'environmental pricing reform' proposals like carbon taxes, cap and trade, and congestion pricing. Environics' Keith Neuman presents their findings in this piece, originally posted at Green Business...

By Keith Neuman, Ph.D.

Environmental pricing reform (or EPR) is the term now used to describe the various types of market mechanisms (e.g. carbon pricing, cap and trade, congestion fees) which are now being given serious attention as the most promising strategy for addressing climate change and other pressing environmental challenges such as water scarcity and traffic congestion. This concept has been around for some time, and is now finally receiving serious attention on the North American policy agenda. Economists have long been making a persuasive case for harnessing market forces to achieve environmental objectives, but only recently has this cause been adopted by major players, such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy. The idea that society puts a monetary price on environmental "goods" and "bads", and then letting market forces do their work (as they do with most other forms of business and consumer behavior) is compelling.

Governments and industry now seem ready to move forward with environmental pricing strategies, but is the Canadian public ready to buy in? The limited experience to date is hardly promising. Over the past year, the B.C. provincial carbon tax has been implemented but remains highly controversial (it has become a major issue in the current provincial election), and the Federal Liberal Party's touted "Green Shift" election platform failed spectacularly with the electorate. These early examples suggest there is sufficient citizen resistance to make EPR a difficult political sell. Why should this be the case, given the clear evidence that EPR can be an effective environmental policy? There are three central reasons.

First, is it axiomatic that consumers prefer not to pay more for goods and services, and will resist at varying levels when asked to do so. This is the most commonly understood basis for resistance to EPR, and many policy makers mistakenly believe it is the overriding obstacle. But in fact this dilemma is by no means limited to environmental policy, and has not prevented other successful economic policy measures that shifted costs to consumption, such as the GST and the Ontario Health Premiums. Such measures do not succeed because they are popular, but when they are deemed acceptable given their purpose by a sufficiently critical mass of relevant constituents.

Second, the public is skeptical about the effectiveness of EPR, in terms of how paying more for gasoline, water or consumer goods will actually benefit the environment. Research has shown that public resistance to B.C.'s carbon tax has as much to do with doubts about its effectiveness in reducing the province's greenhouse gas emissions as it does with paying a few more cents per litre at the pump. Consumers can readily understand how stiffer regulations or new technologies can make a difference in cleaning up pollution, but it requires a greater act of faith to believe that higher prices or trading systems will accomplish the same goals. Such faith requires confidence in both the intentions and efficacy of governments and industry, and neither has been seen to have done much to justify this level of confidence. Moreover, there continues to be a widely-held public sentiment that market-based environmental policies, such as cap and trade systems, favour industry by giving it a "license to pollute."

Third, at a deeper level environmental pricing reform is not currently well-positioned in terms of how it fits within Canadians' social values and broad world views. This conclusion comes from a research study Environics recently completed for Sustainable Prosperity, a multi-stakeholder non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting EPR policy in Canada (www.sustainableprosperity.ca). This research revealed that Canadians generally view environmental pricing mechanisms in narrow economic terms (akin to other conventional financial levers), without much appreciation of the broader principles of "polluter pays" and the positive force of the market to achieve important social goals.

The research identified distinct segments or groups of the Canadian population, based on their orientation to EPR and their broader social values. It found that among supporters of EPR, there is only a very small group (4%) who understand and support EPR in the same way as the economists and policy-makers who promote it. Most of the Canadians who express support for EPR (13% of the population) do so for very different reasons - they put much less priority on environmental solutions but rather are pro-market enthusiasts who accept the inevitability of market forces whatever their effect (e.g. they are very strong on a social value Environics defines as "social darwinism", and weak on one called "primacy of environmental protection"). While this latter group is on-side with environmental pricing, they are hardly the kind of supporters sought by EPR advocates.

On the opposite side of the issue, the strongest opponents of EPR are those Canadians who make up the most vulnerable parts of society, including women, older Canadians, and those with the lowest levels of education. This group (21% of the population) sees EPR more as a threat than as a solution to anything. They may care about the environment, but tend to be more focused on day-to-day concerns. There is little potential for building support for environmental pricing initiatives within this group, but it is hardly one that can be ignored if EPR policy is to succeed in Canada.

In the middle is a sizeable group (33%) which is on the fence about EPR. This group (we call them "responsible citizens") has a high degree of social responsibility and concern about the environment. These Canadians are open to the potential of market mechanisms to offer solutions to issues like climate change because they are truly worried about these issues and feel strongly that progress is essential. But they are also concerned about how EPR might affect those more vulnerable than themselves; they are unlikely to support pricing policies that do not treat everyone fairly and make provisions for those who are disadvantaged. The size and composition of this group makes it a critical constituency for building public support for broad-based environmental pricing initiatives, and attracting its support will require demonstrating how such initiatives address social and economic equity issues.

What does this research tell us about what it will take to build the necessary public support in Canada to move forward with environmental pricing reform? EPR will continue to be a tough sell to consumers until such market mechanisms are framed in ways that are more in tune with Canadians' social values, and in particular address the discomfort many citizens have with using market forces to address environmental objectives. This cannot be accomplished through facts and arguments alone (which rarely sway established public attitudes), but through developing a new narrative that more effectively defines EPR in what it will accomplish, in meeting broadly held environmental, economic and social aspirations.

Keith Neuman (keith.neuman@environics.ca) is Group Vice-President, Public Affairs, for Environics Research Group Ltd.

In his column today, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman criticized cap and trade as politically unworkable and suggested that greens shouldn't be the spokespersons for the climate agenda. This comes on the heels of an interview with Newsweek's Sharon Begley where he attributes the increase in Americans who say news of global warming is being exaggerated to Al Gore.

The mood must be transatlantic, as British environmentalist Stephan Hale has also published an op-ed piece in the Guardian titled "Climate change is too big a problem to be left to the environmentalists," which makes many similar points.

In the Newsweek interview, Friedman claims that polling by the Times shows that while voters oppose taxes, they support them if you target the money for action on global warming and energy independence. But Friedman has mis-remembered the Times poll in ways that support his policy agenda of a high carbon tax. The difference has significant policy implications

I went back and read the 2007 Times/CBS poll Friedman is referring to. Voters told pollsters they would pay more in taxes or for electricity from solar and wind and would pay more for gasoline to reduce oil dependency. But they said they would NOT want to pay higher taxes if it 'combats climate change' or 'relieves us from living under the thumb of petro-dictators,' as Friedman claimed to Begley. The difference is critical.

Here are the questions that Friedman is mis-remembering. Voters told the pollsters that they:

* Would be willing to pay more in taxes on gasoline and other fuels if money went to research for renewables like solar and wind (64-33)

* Would pay more for electricity if it came from solar or wind (75-20)

* Oppose raising gasoline taxes to deal with global warming (58­38)

* Support a gasoline tax to reduce dependence on foreign oil (64-30)

* Oppose a gasoline tax to pay for war on terrorism (49-44)

* Oppose a gasoline tax if it was $2/gallon, or $1/gallon (76-20, 70-27)

Contrary to Friedman's claim, voters in the Times/CBS survey support paying more in taxes or for electricity for solar and wind for reasons that are independent of their concern over global warming. Indeed, what this survey found is that voters oppose paying more in gasoline taxes to deal with global warming or the war on terror.

This is consistent with other polls, and is the reason that we have long encouraged a policy agenda focused on increasing investment in clean energy for economic and energy independence reasons, rather than increasing the price of fossil fuels for global warming reasons. If the money for investment comes from a modest carbon tax, all the better. But the public has clearly and repeatedly stated it would only support a tax or higher fossil fuel prices if it used for clean energy investments.

A major new climate bill hit the House of Representatives this week and was met with deft political maneuverings from Senate Republicans that could render cap and trade dead on arrival. The Breakthrough Institute team has the angles covered:

Jesse Jenkins says this new climate bill is proof of misplaced priorities as the leading green groups setting the climate agenda walk away from billions of dollars in critical clean energy investments in favor of regulations, standards and carbon pricing. See also "Climate Bill is All About the Coal Hard Cash" at Huffington Post and listen to Jenkins talk about the Markey-Waxmen bill on KPFA radio.

Meanwhile in the Senate, two Republican amendments may leave cap and trade with no where to go. In reaction to the House climate bill, the Senate this week voted 89-8 to preemptively reject any cap and trade bill that increases consumer energy prices and voted 98-0 to ensure that any climate bill protects middle-income taxpayers from any tax increases.

Roger Pielke jr. thinks the Thune Amendment may have preemptively killed cap and trade and says Republicans have outflanked Democrats on climate already with the Ensign Amendment.

Michael Shellenberger sees these votes as the clearest rejection yet of the pollution pricing paradigm and examines the artful political maneuverings at play.

Ted Nordhaus is left worrying that the climate bill is on a crash course for compromise that will leave us stuck with the worst of both worlds: a climate policy lacking both a price signal sufficient to drive private investment anywhere near the scale we need and NO money for public investments in an RD&D strategy sufficient to make clean energy cheap.

Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins outline what Democrats can do to regain the political high ground and win the climate debate in this op ed, featured at Huffington Post. If Democrats want to win, they should quickly follow President Obama's lead by shifting the focus of climate legislation from pollution regulation to bold government investment in the clean energy economy.

As Congressional Democrats and DC greens gear up to fight for cap and trade, yet another another public opinion poll shows voters want investments in clean energy, not new taxes or regulations.

While Congressional Democrats and leading green groups insist that what the public wants is cap and trade to deal with climate change, yet another poll was released today showing voters want investments in clean energy, not new taxes or regulations.

If I were a Republican, I'd be relieved to have climate legislation to attack right about now...

Here's a quick look at the highlights from the new Public Agenda/Yankelovich poll...

Continue reading "Congress Debates Pollution Pricing; Public Wants Clean Energy Investment" »

Two weeks ago Andrew Revkin of the New York Times wrote an article with the headline, "In Climate Debate, Exaggeration is Common Pitfall." In it he pointed to Washington Post columnist, George Will, on the right, who claimed global warming is not happening by drawing unscientific conclusions from sea ice data, and to Al Gore, on the left, for claiming that increased hurricane damage is due to global warming. There is not scientific evidence for either claim, Revkin noted.

Revkin quoted American University communications professor, Matthew Nisbet, who studies the social science of global warming communications. Nisbet said:

Mr. Gore's approach, focusing on language of crisis and catastrophe, could actually be serving the other side in the fight.

"There is little evidence to suggest that it is effective at building broad-based support for policy action," Dr. Nisbet said. "Perhaps worse, his message is very easily countered by people such as Will as global-warming alarmism, shifting the focus back to their preferred emphasis on scientific uncertainty and dueling expert views."

The article inspired Media Matters and Center for American Progress to level harsh attacks on Revkin, claiming that while Will's statements were gross lies, Gore's statements were mere exaggerations.

But now there is new empirical evidence to support Revkin's claim that hyping the threat of global warming is actually hurting public support for action.

Continue reading "What's driving opinion on global warming? " »

Public opinion on global warming lags far behind the rhetoric and apparent commitment shown by President Obama and other elected officials, according to reports today from Andy Revkin at the New York Times (in print and on his DotEarth blog).

"The latest in an annual series of polls from the Pew Research Center on people's top priorities for their elected leaders shows that America and President Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming," Revkin writes, pointing out that "Mr. Obama stressed the [global warming] issue throughout his campaign and several times in his inaugural speech, mentioning stabilizing climate in the same breath as preventing nuclear conflict at one point."

Continue reading "Public Opinion Cool on Global Warming" »

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, jr., cross posted from Prometheus

Yesterday's E&E News PM (subscription) has an interesting article about a new poll out on U.S. view of climate change, sponsored by a set of environmental groups and consultants. It supports many arguments that we have made here at Prometheus, such as the fact that support for action on climate change is broad but shallow, the public generally accepts a significant human role in climate change, and Al Gore has played a big role in making the issue partisan (an even more interesting finding because Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is a sponsor of the poll). I don't have the poll yet, but have requested it. Meantime, here is an excerpt from the E&E News PM story:

Continue reading "New Poll Finds Shallow Support for Climate Action, Partisan Split" »

No, it's not the 2008 election. It's the fight over the future of American energy policy. And Democrats are getting trounced by a disciplined Republican offensive on oil drilling.

According to a statewide survey released on July 30th, a slim majority of Californians now supports expanded oil drilling off our state's treasured coastline. Support for offshore drilling is even up six percent among the state's Democrats. In a land where offshore drilling has been a third-rail of politics for decades, this new surge in support for drilling is as sure a sign that Democrats are quickly losing ground to the vigorous GOP offensive to Drill! Drill! Drill! for more oil.

Continue reading "Democrats Are Losing the Battle of the Century" »

When I moved to California in 1993 I quickly fell in love with one of the rites of summer: grilling fresh salmon. Ted took this ritual to another level, hosting salmon BBQs at his house complete with fancy sauces, cold rose wine, and friends.

Back then, salmon was cheap -- thirty or forty bucks would get you a whole one, enough for 30 or 40 people. Over the years, the salmon stock declined and the price increased, enough so that the size of the parties and the servings got smaller and smaller.

This year, salmon fishing has been banned from the California and Oregon coasts. There are no salmon BBQs. There are many reasons, some historic and some proximate. More than 150 years of logging has stripped rivers of their shade cover, heating up the water and clogging it with silt, boiling and suffocating salmon eggs. Mining has had a similar effect. And the need for water for agriculture has lowered rivers to levels that the salmon can't swim back up stream.

I'm not sure what's more depressing, the loss of salmon or the lack of public outcry about it. I would have expected Alice Waters and Michael Pollan to be leading marches on Sacramento and Washington by now. Bring back our salmon! Yes, it sounds foodie-elitist, but the truth is that salmon fishing used to provide thousands of jobs that are now gone. Put the fishermen and women at the front of the march. What a great pro-consumption and pro-jobs campaign that would be.

I've been bummed out about this all summer, but couldn't figure out what to say or do about it. Then, this morning, somebody emailed me asking what my take is on environmental education. If we are post-environmental, what does a post-environmental education look like? I had given a talk on the subject back in 2005 to the New England Environmental Education Alliance and when I re-read it just now I was reminded that the centerpiece of my talk was one of my favorite children's book, Bring Back the Salmon, which I used to read to my son and which invariably choked me up every time I did.

It's an inspiring story about how a bunch of kids in Washington state restored a local creek and brought back the salmon. For me it was a launching point into a meditation about environmental education. But now I hope it can serve as an inspiration for a future effort to bring back the salmon. I encourage readers who know about existing efforts to bring back the salmon to our rivers (and dinner plates) to comment here.

Here's the first of three posts on "The Dream of a Post-Environmental Education."

Continue reading "Come Back, Salmon!" »

"Abu Ghraib became a bizarro world where detainees were kept on dog leashes, subjected to ""invasion of space by female" and bombarded with intolerable sounds, including "meows from cat-food commercials, Yoko Ono singing and Eminem rapping about America."

From the Times review of Jane Mayer's new book on American torture.

Gas station marquees have apparently displaced body count headlines in the minds of Americans.  As gas prices skyrocketed over the past few months, concerns with fuel and oil prices have quickly risen to eclipse the Iraq War and secure the second highest ranking on Gallup's monthly "Most Important Problem" poll, released yesterday.

According to Gallup, the 25% of those polled citing fuel and energy prices in June as the nation's top problem is up dramatically from 17% in May and 6% in January. 

Despite the rise of fuel price anxieties (or perhaps because of it), the economy and jobs retain the first position in the Gallup list of most pressing concerns.  According to Gallup, concern with the economy is about as high today as it has been at any time since the start of George W. Bush's presidency in January 2001.

The message from Americans is clear: economic concerns and energy prices trump all.  That's a message that cannot be ignored by proponents of climate solutions and a clean energy revolution. 

Continue reading "Sticker Shock - Fuel Prices Now American's #2 Concern" »

One major tendency among many environmentalists today is to valorize asceticism and to criticize consumerism. On this topic a lively debate has ensued over the last few days in response to Michael Shellenberger's blog post criticizing Gandhi for his advocacy of poverty and rejection of modernity.

Continue reading "Is Consumption Evil?" »

by Helen Aki, Breakthrough Generation Fellow

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Continue reading "Conservation to Conservatism" »