Gay marriage vs climate change

More evidence that we don't want to pay for climate change mitigation:

Americans have the “right” opinions on environmental issues, but “they don’t really care,” concludes Matthew Yglesias, a blogger and editor for the Atlantic Monthly (matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com). He says he reached this conclusion after perusing the results of a report from the research and strategy firm American Environics and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

The report, “Energy Attitudes,” found that 69 percent of voters would support a candidate with whom they disagreed on environmental matters and that there are six issues, including gay marriage, abortion and taxes, that are more important to them (american-environics.com).

Even people who described themselves as “environmentalists” put other issues higher on their priority lists. The upshot of the report, Mr. Yglesias writes, “is that while there’s public eagerness to do something about global warming, it’s very tenuous, and people are rabidly opposed to anything that would increase energy costs.”

I'm not surprised that no one wants to pay higher energy prices to mitigate climate change, but in a ranking exercise, gay marriage is more important to us than climate change?

Comments

[reason]

Unfortunately, that sounds right to me - but cut out the "us" part of it (I'm a furriner!). Unless of course "us" means US!

Just as well they didn't ask about Britney Spears! Now that would have been REALLY important!

[PaulS]

I'm not surprised. Remember, most people are not climate/energy geeks, scientists, academics, or otherwise curious or interested parties. For the most part, climate change is still a nebulous abstraction about computer simulations, or, perhaps at the very most, about remote places and times that have zero impact on one's own life. Or alternatively, it's about apocalyptic predictions of the sort that have been made for millennia by kooks and cranks, without any result.

More personally, I'm not all that willing to spend money based on the results of computer simulations done with secret unpublished software that is therefore subject to no criticism, much less auditing and quality control. "Trust me" doesn't cut it, certainly not with stuff probably written by poorly supervised grad students, or worse still, poorly supervised contractors. I've seen too much of that sort of rubbish in my career.

Of course, some folks blame every passing tornado, rainstorm, or hurricane on climate change. But that's like the smoke alarm that sounds every time one makes toast. Sensible folks realize that U.S. weather has always been awful and tumultuous, compared to that in Western Europe where many of their ancestors came from.

So, for an ordinary voter, what is there, really, to hang one's hat on? Even if ski hills in the European Alps are alleged to have problems, that's strictly a matter for incomprehensibly rich folks in some other universe. And even if bloggers bang on about it, well, they bang on about a lot of things, don't they?

[odograph]

Is the economic term "bounded rationality?"

We suffer from it as a species ...

[joshua corning]

gay marriage is more important to us than climate change?

My guess is that it is mostly the anti-gay marriage crowd...

My favorite is that people are more interested in taxes then climate change...want to bet it is not the pro-tax crowd?

[Sameer]

Are there incentive based methods to steer public opinion on issues like gay marriage/civil union, abortion etc.? OR are these issues forever excluded from such a possibility because a "market" cannot be created around these ideas?

In "Freakonomics", Levitt discusses the implication of legalizing abortion and effects on crime rate etc. Are similar economic studies done regarding gay unions? Whether the state permits gay unions and what rights does it extend to gay partners (including adoption etc.) must influence decisions about accepting a job or business in a particular place for homosexuals. Do these decisions have significant economic impacts on a large scale?

[TokyoTom]

What's the surprise, John? I can care about gay rights (or not) and it will cost me nothing. But doing something about climate change will hit my pocket book, so if falls lower on people's priorities.

[joshua corning]

I like that all the popular ones are individual rights...while climate change is a community right.

[Effect of Global Warming]

great article - but man the title is funny! LOL!