[Editors] MIT: Climate change tops Americans' environmental concerns

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT survey: Climate change tops Americans' environmental concerns
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, OCT. 31, 2006
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu

GRAPHS AVAILABLE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--According to a recent MIT survey, Americans now 
rank climate change as the country's most pressing environmental 
problem-a dramatic shift from three years ago, when they ranked 
climate change sixth out of 10 environmental concerns.

Almost three-quarters of the respondents felt the government should 
do more to deal with global warming, and individuals were willing to 
spend their own money to help.

"While terrorism and the war in Iraq are the main issues of national 
concern, there's been a remarkable increase in the American public's 
recognition of global warming and their willingness to do something 
about it," said Stephen Ansolabehere, MIT's Elting R. Morison 
Professor of Political Science.

The survey results were released Oct. 31 at the seventh annual Carbon 
Sequestration Forum, an international meeting held at MIT that 
focuses on methods of capturing and storing emissions of carbon 
dioxide-a major contributor to climate change.

Ansolabehere's colleagues on the work are Howard Herzog, principal 
research engineer in MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment 
(LFEE), LFEE research associates Thomas E. Curry and Mark de 
Figueiredo, and Professor David M. Reiner of the University of 
Cambridge.

The findings are a result of two surveys, the first administered in 
September 2003 and the follow-up in September 2006. Each survey 
included about 20 questions focusing on the environment, global 
warming and a variety of climate-change-mitigation technologies.

In designing and administering the surveys, the research team 
collaborated with Knowledge Networks, a company that specializes in 
Internet-based public opinion surveys. More than 1,200 people 
answered each survey (with no overlap between the two groups of 
respondents).

Comparing results from the two surveys provides insights into how 
public awareness, concern and understanding have changed-or not 
changed-during the past three years.

The environment continues to rank in the middle of the list of "most 
important issues facing the U.S. today." However, among 10 
environmental problems, global warming (or climate change) now tops 
the list: Almost half the respondents put global warming in first or 
second place. In 2003, the destruction of ecosystems, water pollution 
and toxic waste were far higher priorities.

There is also an increased sense that global warming is an 
established problem. In the 2006 survey, 28 percent of the 
respondents agreed that it is a serious problem and immediate action 
is necessary-up from 17 percent in 2003. All together, almost 60 
percent of the 2006 respondents agreed that there's enough evidence 
to warrant some level of action.

The other big change is a substantial increase in people's 
willingness to spend their own money to do something about it. In 
2003, people were willing to pay on average $14 more per month on 
their electricity bill to "solve" global warming. In 2006 they agreed 
to pay $21 more per month-a 50 percent increase in their willingness 
to pay.

Could $21 make a real difference? Assuming 100 million U.S. 
households, total payments would be $25 billion per year. "That's 
real money," said Herzog. "While it cannot solve the whole problem, 
it can certainly make significant strides."

For context, Ansolabehere pointed out that the U.S. Department of 
Energy's budget for energy R&D is now about $2 billion per year. 
"Another reading of this outcome is that people want not a little bit 
more spent but rather a lot more spent to solve this problem-and 
they're willing to pay," he said.

The MIT team undertook the original survey in 2003 to find out what 
the public thought about carbon capture and storage (CCS), an 
approach that Herzog and his LFEE colleagues had been studying for 
more than a decade. The team was not surprised to find that more than 
90 percent of the respondents had never heard of CCS. The 2006 survey 
showed similar results.

In general, the respondents' understanding of climate change and 
possible mitigation technologies showed little change between 2003 
and 2006. In terms of their technology preferences, in 2006 most 
still recommended using more wind and solar energy and increasing 
efficiency, but more were willing to consider CCS and nuclear energy 
as possible approaches.

"It's not that people have learned something fundamental about the 
science, but they've come to understand that this problem is real," 
said Ansolabehere. "It takes a prolonged discussion of a complex 
topic like this really to move public concern, and what's happened 
over the past three years has got to continue."

The researchers plan to analyze the survey results in more depth, in 
particular to test for correlations between answers to questions and 
the economic, political, geographical and other demographic 
characteristics of the respondents.

This research was supported by the MIT Carbon Sequestration 
Initiative (sequestration.mit.edu/CSI/index.html). For more details 
about the surveys and their results, go to 
sequestration.mit.edu/research/survey2006.html.

--END-

Written by Nancy Stauffer, MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Senior Science and Engineering Editor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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