Climate Sock

The dust is still whirling around the Australian political landscape. As I write, not only are the coalition talks barely beginning, but with five seats still in doubt it’s not yet clear where the balance of power lies.

Still, there are some conclusions we can draw at this stage that are interesting for Greens in Australia, the UK and potentially elsewhere.

1. Greens are making electoral progress around the world

Like in the UK earlier this year, this was the best-ever election result for the Australian Greens. They won a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time in a competitive election, and increased their vote share to its highest national level. Not only will they potentially hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives (two recounts are currently underway that could potentially give them further seats), they’ll also increase their group in the Senate, further adding to their influence.  Above all else, the result is hugely encouraging for Green Parties, and a further demonstration that they have the opportunity to become mainstream across the world.

2. Non-proportional systems hurt Greens

With the inching progress in the UK towards a referendum for an AV electoral system, the results of the Australian Greens are instructive. Sure, AV allows people to vote for their favoured party, when they wouldn’t necessarily take that voting risk for under FPTP. But in Australia that’s still not enough to avoid squeezing out smaller parties. The comparison between vote share and seats won in the House of Representative is reminiscent of the images used by the UK Take Back Parliament campaign earlier this year:

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Last week, we saw that Australian PM Julia Gillard’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to analyse and propose climate policy was widely criticised – but that despite the hype, there really wasn’t any evidence that it was turning the election against Labor. A week on, and it looks like the fuss about Gillard’s plan has completely disappeared, and climate change has become the muzzled dog of the campaign.

For anyone not following the election – you’re missing out. When Gillard called the election last month after toppling Rudd to become Prime Minister, Labor had a fairly healthy lead over the Liberal/National Coalition. But of the last eight polls, three have given the lead to the Coalition, three to Labour (including one being reported as I write), and two call it as a dead heat.  The excellent Pollytics has produced an election simulator that gives a wafer-thin majority to Labor, but it’s clear at this point that the result could easily tip either way.

One of the key factors will be the performance and role of the Greens. They could be crucial in two ways. Firstly, they have a good shot of winning the Melbourne Division from Labor, having polled 45% in the redistributed share in the last election. In an election as close as this, the result in that one seat could make a big difference to Labor – and potentially to the Greens if they win it, and can use its leverage in helping Labor form a government.

Secondly, while the Greens didn’t have any seats in the lower house of the last parliament, they’re polling at around 13% and the election uses Alternative Vote. To bring their redistributed share above 50%, Labor will rely on Green second preferences votes; in the latest Nielsen poll, Labor is getting 83% of those votes – which is strong but leaves perhaps crucial room for improvement.

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The Australian media has been deeply critical of Julia Gillard’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to explore policy responses to climate change. It’s been attacked both by advocates, and critics, of action to tackle climate change – with the coverage attributing particular significance in the heat of the election campaign.

There’s indeed some polling evidence to suggest that voters aren’t convinced by Gillard’s proposal, but its importance in influencing the election seems to have been exaggerated. Despite some of the claims, there’s very little evidence that it’s having much of an impact on voting intentions.

Gillard’s proposal is for a 150-strong assembly of citizens, selected to be nationally representative, which would analyse and discuss climate issues, and make recommendations to policy-makers. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a majority of 53% oppose the proposal, while 41% support it. Another poll for the Daily Telegraph apparently found 62% opposed.

Unfortunately, Australian pollsters don’t appear to be as obliging with their data as are those in some other countries, so I only have these papers’ word to go on for the results of the polls, and can’t check how fairly they’re worded.  This is important because the wording of a question can have a huge impact on the results that come out. But taking the two polls on face value, the conclusion appears to be that the policy is slightly unpopular – but not wildly so.

Despite this, some of the coverage has presented public reaction in a very different light. According to the Australian, “voters have turned against Labor’s proposal for a citizens assembly on climate change”. 3AW claim it could be “the ‘turning point’” of the election.

But these claims that the policy is swinging the election look rather like bluster without any real evidence behind it. Gillard made the announcement on 23^rd July. Since then, the polls have shown no trends and no movement outside the margin of error. One pollster has Labor falling 3pts; another shows them gaining 2pts, then losing 2pts in the next poll; a third has them falling 1.5pt and then losing another point in a subsequent poll.

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How far is concern about climate change the preserve of the elite?  It’s a simple question, but one that I’ve not previously seen answered convincingly. Many of the polls I’ve covered break out the data by social grade and education, but yet none of them show really clear distinctions in attitudes towards climate change.

However, a new poll by YouGov does show something different.  Their poll was commissioned by Chatham House, and sampled both UK general public, and a YouGov panel of ‘influential people’. Here, there was more difference between the audiences than I’ve seen from looking at distinctions of social grade or education, with the elite panel apparently significantly more concerned about climate change than the rest of the population.

First, a quick word on the panel. It’s operated by YouGovStone, a partner agency of YouGov, who say it “includes Parliamentarians, business leaders, senior journalists, senior professionals in health and education, academics and charity leaders”. I can’t find any more details about the make-up of their panel, so have no way of knowing what this means in practice. A panel may include these people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it only includes these people, or that they participated in all of the polls sent to them. Nonetheless, I have no reason to doubt the assertion that the panel represents “‘elite’ opinion-formers”.

The survey looks at various aspects of foreign affairs, with two questions that touch on climate change. The first asks about “current of possible future threats to the British way of life”. In the general public sample, 25% choose climate change/global warming (sixth placed); among the elites, 44% do so (fourth placed). (Respondents were limited to choosing a max of four issues – so the difference can’t just be explained by one audience picking many more threats overall)

Similarly, in terms of tackling climate change, the elite panel are much more convinced of the need for action:

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A couple of months ago, EDF Energy put out a poll by YouGov which appeared to show that resistance to new nuclear power stations has decreased. Now, the new Understanding Risk/MORI poll covers much of the same ground about nuclear power, and shows some similar and interesting results.

Between them, the polls shed some light both on where the public stand in terms of different power options, and on the impact of arguments that make nuclear seem more attractive.

Interestingly, the Understanding Risk poll largely validates the results from EDF’s poll. While the latter may have been paid for by a company with something of an interest in a pro-nuclear result, the question structure didn’t seem particularly stacked to produce a result they wanted – and largely matched the results from Understanding Risk.

The polls are useful for understanding public attitudes towards nuclear power in two ways: they indicate how people regard nuclear at the moment, and they also help show the impact of arguments for nuclear power.

At a basic level, nuclear power is currently pretty much the least popular form of power generation in the UK. When asked favourability towards different sources, it comes in at the bottom of the pile – around the same place as both coal and gas.

Similarly, there is strong local opposition to the construction of new nuclear power stations. While three in four claim they would support wind farms being built within five miles of their home, only a quarter say the same about a new nuclear station.

However, the polls also show that this opposition is relatively soft. The arguments for nuclear power can change these attitudes quite strongly.

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I was at the excellent Blog Nation conference in London this weekend, organised by Liberal Conspiracy. While I think it’s hugely important that tackling climate change shouldn’t be seen as a party political, or a left/right issue, the conference was a good opportunity for leftish bloggers and campaigners to talk about plans for the next few months and years.

Sunny at Liberal Conspiracy was kind enough to give me a platform to garble at the conferees for a few minutes, and here’s the short presentation I put together:

Blog Nation presentation

The gist of my argument (going with the slides above) was:

There are two major issues in public perceptions of climate change in the UK at the moment. The first is to do with understanding and enthusiasm/engagement. While climategate etc has only had a fairly limited impact on perceptions, and while only very few are convinced that man-made climate change isn’t happening, as many as two-thirds are unconvinced that climate change is a big issue. This is a substantial proportion, suggesting a widespread lack of enthusiasm among the public about the issue.

The second challenge is to do with who the public are hearing about climate change from. At least in the UK, politicians are the group who are most visible talking about climate change, but they’re also the most distrusted. So even where people are generally quite willing to take action, or make lifestyle changes, to deal with climate change, they’re very suspicious when they hear politicians saying that they should do so.

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Busily working on a presentation this weekend (which will be up here soon), so just a couple of links to some interesting new polls:

The Understanding Risk group have recently released their data for a UK national poll focused on climate change and energy sources. It’s got loads to look at, and the results can be interpreted in various ways, particularly with the comparison with a 2005 data .  One way of looking at it is  that there’s no evidence that people have become any more worried about climate change since 2005 (and arguably have become less concerned).  But most people are still pretty worried, and levels of outright rejection are still very low.

A poll from Stanford shows that in the US about a third now remember hearing stories about climate scientists’ emails, and about a quarter remember stories about the IPCC’s reports. The unspecified climate scientists come out slightly better than the IPCC – perhaps reflecting US feelings about international institutions. (Thanks Bob Ward for pointing this one out)

Another US poll, this one from Yale/George Mason, indicates that scientists are the most trusted source of information about global warming – and that trust has recovered after a small drop in January (though not much beyond margin of error). Another part of this poll is accessible here.

And finally… a very PR-friendly poll from Greenpeace. Apparently nearly three quarters in Suffolk want more investment in clean energy like wind power.

There’s an excellent article in a recent New Scientist, which makes a powerful case for rethinking the way climate change is communicated. While the article, by Bob Ward, is controversial, and may jar with a lot of climate scientists and communicators, much of what we’ve seen here in the public opinion data bear him out, and his conclusions seem sound.

The article starts with the assertion that climate scientists’ reputation has been damaged by the challenges to the analyses of the IPCC and UEA’s research teams. This is plausible, though I’m reluctant to accept the direct comparison made with the damage suffered by the Roman Catholic Church and the UK Parliament over the last couple of years.

It’s true there’s been some decline in conviction in the UK that man-made climate change is happening, but I’m yet to see evidence that this was a direct consequence of the stories about the IPCC and UEA. The polls around the time of the coverage of the UEA email hack suggested little change in public opinion; it wasn’t until the freezing winter that the numbers really moved (though: post hoc ergo propter hoc – this doesn’t prove that the cold weather caused the shift). It may indeed be the case that scientists have become less trusted as communicators about climate change, but as far as I’m aware this hypothesis hasn’t yet been proved.

Nevertheless, Ward’s broader argument still stands. Even if lack of trust in climate scientists is not necessarily itself a major issue, there clearly is a problem. Public interest, belief, and commitment to tackling climate change appear to be fairly malleable, and are affected substantially by short-term factors like the weather – rather than by developments in the science. The activities of critics of climate research are also effectively keeping alive the question of whether or not man-made climate change is happening, to a greater extent than may be justified. On top of this, politicians appear to be the main group who are heard talking about talking climate change, yet they’re also the group who are least trusted to do so.

As Ward argues, climate science is making a mistake in “hunkering down and hoping for the best”. Instead, it should learn from how other organisations have recovered from similar challenges. Quoting from a PR strategist at Weber Shandwick, he suggests a course of action that’s quite different from the approaches that appear to have been taken recently:

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It may be natural to assume that one of the things that will come out of the Gulf oil spill is a swing in US opinion, away from oil exploration, and towards less polluting sources. But the polls are surprisingly undramatic on the subject. Overall, there appears be less growth than might be expected in US public opposition to offshore drilling

In terms of the current level of support for offshore drilling the US, two different polls conducted in May (i.e. after the spill) show satisfyingly similar numbers. According to Angus Reid, 57% support “drilling for oil and gas in the coastal areas around the United States”. A poll by Public Policy Polling, found 55% support “drilling for oil off the American coastline”. A further 10% and 15% are undecided in the respective polls.

Whether this shows any change in attitudes from before the spill is less clear. I’m yet to find a national US poll that asked a comparable question (i.e. support for any offshore drilling) before April. A Gallup poll in May ’08 showed 57% supporting an expansion of drilling into US coastal and wilderness areas that were then off-limits.  We might conclude that if 57% wanted an expansion of drilling two years ago, and now the same proportion would support any drilling, support must have fallen at least a little.

Unexpectedly, the best answer for confirming this appears to come from Fox News. As luck would have it, they polled on offshore drilling two weeks before the crisis started, and have repeated the same question twice since then: “Do you favor or oppose increasing offshore drilling for oil and gas in U.S. coastal areas?”. The results are clear – a drop, but not a haemorrhage, in support for drilling:

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After a pause in hostilities for the election, it looks like the favourite climate story of the year has resurfaced.  A new poll is out and being covered with the headline that fewer people now believe in climate change or think that it’s an urgent issue demanding attention.

There’s some truth in the basic argument that people are now less convinced and worried about climate change than they have been in the past. But when the Guardian runs a story like this, it gets widely noticed and repeated, and there are several reasons why we shouldn’t get too carried away by the news.

1. This is the same story we have already heard several times

In February, there was quite a bit of print, broadcast and online coverage for a BBC poll that showed a fall in public belief in climate change. According to the BBC’s numbers, the proportion saying that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely man-made” fell from 41% in November ’09 to 26% in February ’10.

A couple of weeks later, the Guardian reported a different poll by the ad agency Euro RSCG. This one showed that the proportion that thinks that climate change “is definitely a reality” dropped from 44% to 31% between January ’09 and January ’10. In fact, the Guardian enjoyed the poll so much, they reported it a second time, two weeks later.

So when we hear about yet another poll that shows a drop in belief or concern about climate change between last year and this year, we’re probably not seeing anything new. A check of the numbers in the YouGov poll confirms this.

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