The Politics of Climate Change
I would like to call our attention to two recent surveys, one book, and their potential implications for the politics of climate change. The first survey highlights in the United States a ‘wide partisan divide over global warming’ as well as a rapid, drastic and recent reduction in belief amongst people in the US in the evidence for climate change. The second survey emphasizes a rising concern toward climate change globally, and the book works from the provocative premise that we in industrial countries essentially “have no politics of climate change.”
Firstly, then, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted and released last month, nearly 80 percent of democrats agree there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, while the figure for republicans, at 38 percent, is less than half of that. And only 32 percent and 16 percent of these respondents, respectively, agree that climate change is a product human activity. Amongst independents, 56 percent agree that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, with only 32 percent therein agreeing that this is due to human activity. While this may not be news to many, or even most, it should be considered anew with some urgency. More urgent still, perhaps, is that, from April 2008 to October 2009, the percentage of Americans believing that there is “solid evidence” of climate change fell from 71 to 57 percent.
Secondly, HSBC’s recently released fourth Climate Confidence Monitor, a survey of 15,000 people in 15 different countries, assesses attitudes worldwide toward climate change. The report concludes, significantly, that climate change ranks among respondents’ top three concerns. The report is rich in findings; I was struck, for example, that “[t]wo thirds (64 per cent) of respondents in China claimed to be making a significant effort to help reduce climate change, compared to 23 per cent in the UK, 20 per cent in the USA and 11 per cent in Japan.” So, we see that concerns regarding climate change are not confined to particular regions or countries. They truly are global, and intense—even in areas we perhaps might not have expected them to be.
Thirdly, Anthony Giddens’ book The Politics of Climate Change, published about a year ago, is a sensible and well-researched contribution to bi-partisan discussions of what is perhaps the ultimate issue for national, global, and human security. Giddens’ overall premise is that we in advanced industrial countries “do not have a developed analysis of the political innovations that have to be made if our aspirations to limit global warming are to become real.” This much seems supported in the Pew Poll discussed above; except the Pew Poll may to an extent call into question the very idea of our supposed ‘aspirations to limit global warming’ here in the US. The HSBC survey, however, indicates that concern over climate change is, like the phenomenon itself, global.
It is in this light, and in a spirit of bi-partisanship, that I will briefly lay out a few of Giddens’ salient suggestions for tackling climate change politically. First and foremost, climate change is not, and cannot be, a left-right issue. Green is not the new red; state planning will be essential to mitigating climate change, yet markets too will be central. In principle, solutions should be balanced between being top-down and bottom-up, perhaps favoring the latter. Also, we must cope with risk and uncertainty; ‘greens’ would do well not to cling too tightly to ‘the precautionary principle,’ while climate skeptics cannot wait for some sort of perfectly certain pronouncement from the community of climate scientists.
All of the above is, of course, easier said than done. But it must be done nonetheless. In closing, I would bring also to the reader’s attention Giddens’ recognition of a ‘development imperative’ regarding poorer nations, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. Still, the HSBC survey should provide those in the US and throughout industrial world with confidence that humanity is concerned with the risks currently accumulating due to climate change—and that international cooperation in this area may be increasingly feasible, as we get our own houses in order.
