Ideally, people would care about the catastrophic potential of global warming.
Ideally, people would act on what they say they believe.
Polling data indicate that people care about climate change. According to a 2018 survey, 61% of Americans say that the US government should be doing “a lot more” to combat climate change. “A lot more”. So that means they’re willing to pay a lot more, right? Give up a lot more? In economic terms, these ideas are synonymous.
But if you dig through that survey a bit further, you’ll find the following sentence:
“That said, three-quarters of Americans express concern that efforts to address the issue will raise prices on things they buy and just two in 10 are very confident that those efforts in fact would reduce global warming.”
So we’re back to square one. Global warming: big problem. But people don’t want to change their behavior to solve it.
Some believe that climate activism can encourage others to go green. Here’s why that’s misguided. Continue reading
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