In the case of public policies intended to mitigate climate change, what information would nudge you to embrace costly carbon mitigation policies (such as supporting a $3 per gallon gas tax)? Information that convinces you that climate change is a major challenge? Information that convinces you that mitigating carbon emissions can be achieved at a low cost and thus is a cheap "insurance policy"? The environmental community has argued that battling climate change is a policy imperative and that our economy will face relatively low costs in doing so. These claims have not achieved much traction. At the Federal level, there will be no carbon push. The good news is that California's AB32 is going forward and I am optimistic that it will be a "green guinea pig".
How do we explain the failure of smart environmentalists to convince the majority to join the "climate hawks"?
An easy answer is to blame the "Vast Right Wing conspiracy" and to point to the causal polluting effects of Fox News and Friends on the American middle class. Anyone who challenges this consensus view is going to feel some heat so I'm not surprised that Joe Romm has some tough things to say about Prof. Matthew Nisbet's new study of the media's role in influencing the climate change mitigation debate.
Why has Matthew Nisbet's report generated such heat? It appears to me that his core thesis challenges the rationale for the existence of blogs such as Joe Romm's "Climate Progress".
Some environmentalists claim that the reason that the median voter hasn't supported climate change mitigation legislation is due to biased media coverage. If this diagnosis were true, then the appropriate "medicine" is countervailing force. Joe Romm has taken on this role with a gusto. I read Joe Romm's blog. It is both informative and funny (the comments people post are unintentionally extremely funny). He appears to believe that he is a "David" in a righteous fight against the Goliath better known as Fox TV and the Koch Brothers and all of their lesser brethren. His writing style suggests that he views the typical "Joe the Plumber" as having been artificially manipulated by the media. This narrative assumes that Joe the Plumber has been brainwashed by an unrelenting campaign of misinformation.
If this logic were true, then a "liberal/green/scientific" coalition of Joe Romm and other truth tellers could save the world if they could collect the money to invest in an influential activist media campaign that could counter-act these special interests, by deprogramming the silent majority who do not know what to think about the costs and benefits of carbon mitigation.
But Nisbet questions whether environmentalists can fall back on the excuse that they are under-resourced and out gunned; to quote Nisbet's conclusion;
"As detailed in this report, the major environmental organizations are a $1.7 billion-a-year movement, with revenue streams that rival the most expensive presidential campaigns in history and the combined earnings of the world’s richest sports franchises. In their efforts to pass cap and trade legislation, they spent heavily on general education efforts, engaging policymakers, journalists and the public. They also invested considerable resources in mobilizing their more than 12 million members and in brokering alliances with some of the world’s largest companies, partners intended to augment their efforts at direct lobbying. Through these means and others, environmental groups have closed the gap with their traditional opponents in terms of spending and influence. Indeed, the effort to pass cap and trade legislation may be the best financed political cause in American history.
The organizations that led the effort on cap and trade legislation are unique among Beltway groups for their decade-spanning, linear growth in revenue and size. Dominated by senior leaders and staff from the Baby Boomer generation, these organizations together employ a highly credentialed and professional elite numbering in the several thousands. Yet the very nature and size of the environmental movement may pose challenges in adapting strategy and achieving success over the next decade."
So, if Nisbet is right that this interest group fight was a "fair fight" between two equally endowed foes --- what are we to conclude?
If we could sit down with Millions of Joe the Plumbers, how would they answer questions about why the scary issue of climate change doesn't move them? Are they technological optimists? Risk lovers? Unaltruistic towards people in poor nations? Impatient and not caring about the future? By how much do they under-estimate the likely probabilities of future scenarios that a James Hansen is concerned about? Do they acknowledge the risks but don't want to give Al Gore and friends the credit for leading the effort and having to admit that Al was right?
We need the recession to end and we need to make climate change a national security issue rather than an "Al Gore" issue.