Public opinion and the environment

Public opinion is one of the primary factors determining the degree of environmental protection in a society.

A clean is a highly desirable amenity, and on occasion very important in terms of long-term health. It can also be expensive in many ways. As a result, except in extreme cases, environmental protection is a luxury rather than an immediate necessity. Everyone wants a clean local environment, as long as the price they pay personally is reasonable. This makes spectacular events, such as the Cuyahoga River fires of 1952 and 1969 and large oil spills, especially significant.

Historical Examples

It has long been noticed that more affluent populations have cleaner environments. A 1992 World Bank study reported that concentrations of started to decline with a per-capita gross national product (based on purchasing power parity) of $3,280, sulfur dioxide at $3,670, and fecal coliform in river water at $1,375. Access to and adequate is thus more immediately important than access to clean air (which is less visible). Similar data reveal that U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions per capita peaked in 1920, particulates and carbon monoxide have declined steadily since 1945, and nitrogen oxides peaked in 1980. A 1992 study by the World Health Organization found that air pollutants were generally lower in most megacities (except for Los Angeles) in the noncommunist developed world than in developing nations.

This situation is caused in part by the fact that more affluent societies can afford expensive water treatment, plumbing, and air-pollution controls. For example, from 1972 to 1994 annual pollution-control expenditures in the United States (in 1986 dollars) increased steadily from $26 to $127 billion. This grew especially rapidly starting in 1970 (when the Environmental Protection Agency was created), the year after the Santa Barbara, California, and the last Cuyahoga River fire. Part of the difference between affluent and developing societies (especially noticeable in levels), however, results from the fact that less affluent societies have more urgent concerns.

After the fall of the Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union, Green parties did well in many places in the former Soviet countries, especially in local elections. Environmental quality there was often atrocious, demonstrated by such notorious problems as the massive shrinking of the Aral Sea and catastrophic levels of air and water from heavy industry that led to high levels of infant and birth defects, food contamination, and environmentally induced illnesses. In addition, attempts to fix old Soviet industrial facilities often led to their closure, at least temporarily, which resulted in serious loss of production even of necessary supplies (such as pharmaceuticals) and led to a serious backlash against environmental protection (much of it by the authorities, but ultimately also by voters).

Twenty-first Century Issues

The struggle to save endangered species reveals the importance of public opinion. An estimated 95 percent of are tiny, obscure plants (including and fungi) or invertebrates (insects, worms, and mollusks), mostly tropical. Groups that seek to protect endangered species, however, generally use more popular animals, especially birds (such as the spotted owl and the whooping crane) and large mammals (such as polar bears and various whale species), as emblems.

Another example of the importance of public opinion can be seen in the effects of the severe economic downturn that started in 2008. During this crisis, environmental activism lost much of its popularity with the American public. A spill as spectacular as the one created by the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010 may in previous decades have led to strong popular demand to end offshore oil drilling (as happened after the 1969 spill off the shores of Santa Barbara). Instead, polls showed strong popular support for continued drilling, not only from those involved in the drilling but also often from those whose occupations were harmed by the spill.

In the early twenty-first century, the most significant environmental disputes in the United States concerned global climate change. A key debate was whether the causes were primarily human created, or , as opposed to natural occuring. Differences also centered on whether impacts from change were acceptable or excessive. By the 2020s, the reality of global climate change had become evident. For example, comparisons of historical temperatures showed that Earth had warmed. This was demonstrated by increases in polar ice melt, persistent drought, and extreme weather events which had become more frequent and of greater intensity.

Despite the more common acceptance of global climate change, American perceptions remained divided along political lines. In 2023, Yale and George Mason University polled respondents who self-identified as the most committed segments of the Democratic and Republican parties. Liberal Democrats were far more likely than conservative Republicans to believe that humans caused climate change and that warming temperatures were causing harm to the nation. Democrats were also more likely than Republicans to express that they had experienced extreme weather events.

Among Americans of both parties who did acknowledge climate change, a consensus had formed on the need for more proactive government action. A 2021 study by the University of Chicago indicated this in both the American Democratic Party (96 percent) and Republicans (76 percent).

In 2023 a Gallup poll indicated more respondents favored environmental protection over economic growth by 52 percent to 43 percent. Forty percent of those polled answered that the seriousness of global warming as an issue was underestimated.

Cautionary Notes

Acid rain provides a very instructive lesson regarding the influence of public opinion on environmental policy. Starting around 1980, acid rain was a major theoretical concern. The fear was that acid rain was causing significant damage to forests, eroding buildings, and causing increasingly acidic lakes, often leading to the disappearance of fish). In response to public concerns, the United States set up in the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Project, which after ten years of study concluded that acid rain is primarily an aesthetic concern. Acidic lakes result primarily from acidic deposits from land; many such lakes were found to have been only temporarily neutral or alkaline as a result of heavy lumbering, which had since ceased. Acid rain causes only minor damage to high-altitude forests, while actually fertilizing the soil with additional nitrogen and sulfur. (Later, many global warming scientists concluded that sulfate haze had also helped cool the atmosphere, explaining why global temperatures had increased less than expected.)

During the 1980s, however, the news media operated in standard crisis mode, making the unproven theory of serious damage caused by acid rain appear to be a major crisis. As a result, significant pollution controls were put into place to manage a relatively minor problem. It was certainly desirable for these controls to be instituted, but the resources available for pollution control are not unlimited, and it is possible that those resources could have been better used to deal with other, more serious, environmental problems.

Bibliography

Bailey, Ronald, ed. The True State of the Planet. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Bump, Phillip. “Even the Weather is Now Political.” The Washington Post, 9 Feb. 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/12/weather-politics-climate-change-republicans. Accessed 22 July 2024.

Feshbach, Murray, and Alfred Friendly, Jr. Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege. New York: Basic Books, 1992.

Jones, Jeffrey M. "Record Party Gap on Environment--Economic Growth Tradeoff." Gallup, 13 Apr. 2023, news.gallup.com/poll/474218/record-party-gap-environment-economic-growth-tradeoff.aspx. Accessed 22 July 2024.

Lomborg, Bjørn. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Mooney, Chris. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming. Orlando, Fla.: Harvest Books, 2008.

Murray, Iain. The Really Inconvenient Truths. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2008.

“Public Opinion on Energy and Climate.” Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, epic.uchicago.edu/area-of-focus/public-opinion-on-energy-climate-change. Accessed 22 July 2024.

Tyson, Alec and Brian Kennedy. “Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate.” The Pew Research Center, 23 Jun. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate. Accessed 22 July 2024.