First the bad news. If we had thought the public debate on climate change had been firmly shifted from the basic “experts are divided” stage to the equally illusory but more propitious “it’s happening, but we’re dealing with it” phase, the public may have just given us a reality check. According to an Ipsos MORI poll, referenced in last sunday’s Observer, around 60% of people in Britain still believe that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change”, and another 40% “sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say”. Only a meagre 22% of the population seem to be aware of the current status of the scientific debate.

There are further serious obstacles when it comes to action to deal with the problem. There is widespread cynicism about green “stealth” taxes and regulation, also discerned in a recent poll for the Independent, which found over 70% of people unwilling to “pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change … while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.” Ipsos MORI similarly finds that “only 13%” believe their personal responses “should involve significant and radical lifestyle changes”.

What’s going wrong? I suspect there are a number of things. First has been the disgraceful acquiescence of British broadcast media in the agenda of denial industry, which seems to have had a clear impact on public opinion. British broadcasters, weaned on a notion of “impartiality” that favours powerful interests, just don’t seem able to stop themselves giving time to fraudsters, industry front-men and purveyors of sheer ignorance. We’ve seen it in last year’s “Great Global Warming Swindle” on Channel 4, a documentary surely as baseless and discredited as it’s possible for any broadcast to be, aired in line with specious conceptions of journalistic “balance”, and in spite its creators’ well-earned reputation as fraudsters; in the BBC’s decision to cave on “Planet Relief”, motivated by the very same notion of “impartiality”, the belief of at least one prominent editor that the “causes of climate change” represent “a matter of controversy”, and the helping hand of “Swindle” producer Martin Durkin; in the BBC’s impromptu festival of climate change denial, “Sceptics’ Week”; and in the efforts of blissfully ignorant media clowns like Richard Madeley, Peter Hitchens and (whisper it) Jeremy Clarkson to parade their ignorance as widely as possible - the list goes on, and on, even if among climatologists the debate concluded a decade and a half ago.

Among print media the record of the broadsheets is less than perfect. The Telegraph in particular has played its part in publicising Lord Monckton and Nigel Lawson’s quixotic struggles with reality, and recently gave prominent coverage to the re-vamped, Exxon-sponsored “Oregon petition”, signed by “31,000 scientists”, some of whom, when they exist, apparently even have PhDs. This overall standard of reporting led the late John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan, in a recent study of UK media coverage, to note that the “corporate mass media are, predominantly, still presenting human-induced climate change as a basic argument between “believers” and “unbelievers”. The debate is stalled at square one.”(1)

But one of the most serious culprits is without doubt Britain’s tabloid press. In a series of studies investigating how far the scientific consensus on climate change is reflected in US and UK media, Max Boykoff of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute found that, between 2003 and 2006, there was a largely insignificant divergence from the scientific consensus in British broadsheets, while coverage also improved over time.(2) Among tabloids, on the other hand, Boykoff and Maria Mansfield found that “UK tabloid coverage significantly diverged throughout the study period from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change”, failing to improve in line with the broadsheets. The Daily Mail had a particularly bad record - partly a result, Boykoff and Mansfield suggest, of “the politically conservative stance of the newspaper, where economic status quo and non-regulatory preferences routinely permeate the editorial pages”; as another study of UK broadsheets found, such “similar ideological constellations indeed shaped media representations of climate science and policy issues”. If such “ideological constellations” do play a key role, it is surely significant that the polls bear the clear mark of the “common-sense” economic libertarianism that characterises so much of the discourse of the tabloid and right-wing press.

The “smoking gun” here, however, is surely that socio-economic patterns linked to patterns of newspaper readership tally exactly with those noted in the UK tabloids study. According to Ipsos MORI,

“Those in social class AB, in affluent households, and also those with a university educated/professional qualification background all tend to be more concerned about climate change, back more government intervention and acknowledge a greater need for individual responsibility.

“Newspaper readership is also strongly implicated, with broadsheet readers - particularly those who read The Guardian, The Independent and The Times [the same three UK dailies examined in the broadsheets study] - significantly more likely to cite the environment as a key issue facing the country compared to those who read the mid market and tabloid press.”

Also precisely in line with Boykoff and Mansfield’s predictions is the apparent impact of the tabloids’ misleading coverage on public support for policies to deal with the problem. “Divergent UK tabloid newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change found in this study”, the authors note, “may diminish public support for concrete greenhouse gas mitigation programs when the time for behavioral change comes. … Specifically, as ongoing adherence to the journalistic norm of balanced reporting has contributed to a skewed public understanding of human contributions to climate change, it may continue to significantly contribute—along with other factors—to eventual public resistance to climate mitigation and adaptation plans in the UK.” Every word of this prediction seems to be coming true.

But there is another major culprit we ought to mention, and that is the government. The extraordinary blatancy with which it has continued to plough ahead with policies entirely at odds with its public rhetoric on climate change will undoubtedly, and not unreasonably, have bred cynicism among the public. But it is through the prism of popular economic libertarianism that this cynicism is likely to be expressed. Indeed this conclusion is echoed by Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth, cited in the Independent. “People do get cynical”, he suggests, “unless they see benefits. The Government is playing a dangerous game. They are using climate change to identify potential new taxes and revenues but the public aren't seeing anything in return.” Ipsos MORI’s Phil Downing makes a similar observation: while green taxes are “backed by the public in principle”, people are “asking the question: where is the money going?” In the context of a government that is so clearly not serious about dealing with the problem, perhaps a reaction of profound cynicism should not surprise us.

Yet these latest polling results, while on the face of it shocking and demoralising, suggest some clear points of light. Indeed, one continual finding of recent research has been that media reporting on public opinion consistently exaggerates its right-leaning components, both through selective choice of questions (something Anthony Barnett points to over the recent, widely-covered and apparently influential polling on the issue of 42 days’ detention) and selective reporting of results. Since a great deal goes unreported, and what is covered is often hopelessly skewed, we need to exercise a good deal of caution in assessing the implications of such polls.

Poll results published in May, for instance, provide a potentially illuminating contrast with the most recent results. According to this poll, “a majority of voters believe local councils should force their residents to take action on climate change”; “56% of respondents thought that councils should force people to take action on climate change while 33% did not. 64% of respondents also felt that local authorities should introduce financial incentive schemes to encourage people to reduce greenhouse gases, and 53% felt councils should also introduce penalty schemes for residents who do not act”; a “large majority of respondents - 74% - believe climate change is happening and can be attributed directly to greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity” (my emphasis); and “61% of people would be likely to vote for a candidate” in general elections “that had policies to combat climate change”.

It is also worth remembering that a poll taken a year ago by Ipsos MORI found similar results to those of its most recent survey on the status of the scientific debate, also finding 70% support for government taking a lead on the issue, “even if it means using the law to change people’s behaviour”, and 78% “willing to do more and go further”. Since then, poll results from last September found 78% of people in Britain believing “human activity IS a significant cause” of climate change, and 70% that it is “necessary to take major steps very soon” to deal with it”; a poll in November found 81% “ready to make significant changes to the way I live to help prevent global warming or climate change”, and even 76% in favour of higher energy taxes (including 22% conditional on revenues being used to fund clean or efficient energy sources). One obvious conclusion seems to be that, when asked whether climate change is happening, people in the UK overwhelmingly reply that it is, and clearly favour government-led action to deal with it. When asked about the opinions of climate scientists, on the other hand - perhaps influenced by the media-endorsed framing of duelling scientific “experts” the question evokes - they are far more likely to convey a picture of division, uncertainty and ongoing debate.

It’s also worth noting just how far reporting of the most recent poll, troubling as it is, has taken one particular interpretation and portrayed it simply as fact. The precise scope of “many scientific experts” leaves significant room for ambiguity over their number, and their significance in the (perceived) debate; reporting in the Observer, therefore, that the “majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans” remains unproven by this poll, and as we have seen, is actually contradicted by other recent polls in which the question is posed directly and unambiguously. Similarly, the poll simply does not demonstrate, as the Observer suggests, that “many” people “believe scientists are exaggerating the problem” - in fact the question is not even posed. The question that is posed - “I sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say” - refers only to “people”, not to scientists. To put this in perspective, similar sentiments have in fact been expressed by members of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, leading Oxford climate scientist Myles Allen and NASA's Gavin Schmidt, who can hardly be accused of not taking the problem seriously.

Even in the most recent Ipsos MORI poll, indeed, 77% of people “still professed to be concerned about climate change”, and 68% “want the government to do more” about it (suggesting that its list of questions on specifically individual responsibility may be a red herring). Similarly, a robust majority of 59% want more investment in renewables, “even if it increases the price of energy bills”. This finding has been replicated again and again in polls of the British public. One Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology research paper published last October, reviewing 23 recent polls and studies on public attitudes and energy policy, found “a high level of awareness of the connection between fossil fuel sources of energy and environmental problems such as climate change”; “very low levels of public support for the use of fossil fuels”; “high levels of concern about the possibility of using up finite resources”; and that “[s]ecurity of supply is a key issue and of growing concern.” Moreover, “all the reviewed polls and studies showed that renewable energy was the public’s preferred energy source”; people “were aware of the potential environmental benefits of renewable energy and recognised it as being important for climate change mitigation”; and “[t]ypically around three quarters of respondents expressed a preference for renewables over nuclear energy”.

Unfortunately if unsurprisingly, after a recent high point last year following the release of the Stern and IPCC reports, “the environment” has now been displaced by “the economy” as a more important issue in the public mind. Clearly this is not encouraging, but nor is it necessarily quite as bad as it looks. In a YouGov poll in May, a majority of 53% blamed “[i]nternational conditions, such as the credit crunch and rising oil and world food prices” for “Britain’s current economic difficulties”. On oil specifically, a WPO poll in April found 85% of people foreseeing a higher oil price in the next ten years (including 58% who see it getting “much higher”), and the same percentage believe that “[o]il is running out and it is necessary to make a major effort to replace oil as a primary source of energy”.

Overall, then, the public are concerned about the economy, which they connect at least partly to the price of oil; there is widespread understanding that the oil price is likely to keep climbing; public support for renewable sources of energy is strong and consistent, as is opposition to fossil fuels; there is a very strong willingness to replace our dependence on oil - linked to issues of depletion, sustainability, security of supply, and the environment; and the public consistently want the government to take a lead and do more on climate change. It is not too difficult to conceive of ways in which these widely-held attitudes can be translated into gains for climate campaigners. If the economy is foremost in the public mind, the issue of its precarious foundation on fossil fuels may be the key to reconnecting public concern with sustainability and environmental issues, especially if we are able to point to clear, positive alternatives. But media campaigners may also have an important task ahead, which is to start taking the tabloid press (along with papers like the Telegraph) a lot more seriously. Good use of the Press Complaints Commission in particular, as Climate Campers demonstrated in the case of the Evening Standard, can be very effective in exposing misleading and inaccurate reportage. Nonetheless, time is short, and serious obstacles remain to be overcome.

References:

1. John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan, “The Mass Media, Climate Change, and How Things Might Be”, in David Cromwell and Mark Levene (eds), Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe, London: Pluto, 2007, pp. 158-175.

2. It is worth noting this study’s slant towards the “liberal” end of the mainstream spectrum, however - four of its six sample papers (The Guardian, Observer, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times and Sunday Times) are “liberal” papers, and it significantly excludes the Telegraph, Britain’s highest-selling broadsheet.