Column: Along the Frontier
Do We Care Less? Polls Show Decline in Concern for the Environment
By Courtney White, A West That Works., 4-09-10
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As we approach the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day, two new polls, as well as one recent report, raise important alarm bells about our attitudes toward nature and should, by extension, influence a new mission statement for the next ‘New West.’
The first poll is Gallup’s annual update on American feelings toward the environment. The news is sobering. According to Gallup, national concern continues a steady decline and has reached a point where “Americans are now less worried about a series of environmental problems than at any time in the past 20 years.”
On six of eight specific environmental problems, concern is the lowest Gallup has ever measured. Americans worry most about drinking-water pollution and least about global warming. On the latter, the poll shows that the public has become less worried about the threat of global warming over the last two years. Citizens are “less convinced that its effects are already happening,” says Gallup, “and more likely to believe that scientists themselves are uncertain about its occurrence.”
This unsettling assessment is backed up by a major survey conducted jointly by Yale and George Mason Universities titled the “Climate Change Generation” which focuses Americans who came of age since the “discovery” of man-made climate change in 1988. The survey’s authors assumed that young Americans “growing up in a world of ever more certain scientific evidence, increasing news attention, alarming entertainment portrayals, and school-based curricula, should be more engaged with and concerned about the issue of climate change than older Americans.”
They’re not. The survey revealed that Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 were split on the issue, and on some indicators they are relatively disengaged when compared to older Americans. In fact, the majority of both under 23’s and 23-43 year-olds said they are either not very or not at all worried about global warming.
Why? Why the decline in concern about the environment – especially now, just as major trouble appears to be looming? According to Gallup and the climate survey authors, two factors are influencing national attitudes: (1) the sour economy has moved jobs, health care, and other economic needs to a high priority; and (2) there’s a general belief among Americans that things have gotten better on the environmental front in the last twenty years, not worse.
But there’s a third possibility that’s even more alarming: people simply care less and less about the environment with each passing year.
This observation comes from a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, 2008 (vol. 105. no. 7) by Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic titled: “Evidence for a fundamental and pervasive shift away from nature-based recreation.” That title alone should be a wake-up call for all westerners.
A previous study they did on national park visitation in the U.S. found that after a steady 50-year increase, attendance peaked in 1987 and has been declining ever since. This conclusion received widespread attention, including some vocal skepticism, so they decided to follow it up with a comprehensive study of sixteen new variables, including national park visitation in Japan and Spain, day-visits to BLM lands, national forests, and state parks in the U.S., as well as hunting, fishing, camping, and backpacking trend data going back in some cases to the 1930s.
Their discovery? The decline in U.S. national park visitation was no anomaly. All sixteen variables showed long-term downward trends, with each peaking in the mid-1980s, including visits to Japan and Spain’s national parks.
Their conclusion is jolting: “The many short-tem correlations in declining public land use in the U.S. and Japan suggest that there has been a fundamental and general national and potentially international shift in people’s participation in nature recreation over the past 20 years.”
This trend has enormous implications, they insist. Among other things, research shows that environmentally responsible behavior results from direct contact with nature. No contact = no interest = no action. Peter Kareiva, of The Nature Conservancy, responding in the next issue of Proceedings, wrote that if this trend is maintained “then the pervasive decline in nature recreation may well be the world’s greatest environmental threat.”
As a result, he agrees with Pergams and Zaradic that the decades-old argument for environmental protection based on the intrinsic value of nature is failing, and needs to be replaced with an ecosystem services argument (services that provide food, water, and fuel for humans), especially since more than half of the world’s populations now live in cities.
This is a big deal. Not only is it a far cry from the aim of the original Earth Day, it challenges the modus operandi of the current recreationally-focused New West. Clearly, important changes are afoot, and we should consider them carefully as we contemplate what we do next.
Courtney White is the executive director and co-founder of the Quivira Coalition and the author of Revolution on the Range: the Rise of a New Ranch in the American West as well as countless articles and essays on the region. His Along the Frontier column runs on NewWest.Net twice a month. Read more from Courtney at his Web site, www.awestthatworks.com.
You can read Courtney’s entire series of columns, which are presented as a sequence, on his New West archive at www.newwest.net/courtneywhite. See the most recent columns below.
The New, Carbon West
Understanding the ‘New’ West: Whither the Public Lands?
The Geography of Hope
After the West’s New Gold Rush
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Comments
Then there are the increasing restrictions on "public lands," where recreation "management" is usually manifested by outright closures. I got interested in the environment because I USED to be able to simply explore without running afoul of some restriction or prohibition.
Better to sit at the X box doing Grand Theft than deal with the disappointments of the current "outdoors experience."
As for the larger context, the big thing here is the fact that zillions and zillions of foundational dollars hyping "climate change" -- against the few millions the for-profit sector spent -- have resulted in a gigantic yawn from the public. The sturm and drang has not been accompanied by anything tangibly positive, in contrast to the very real reductions in per-unit water and air pollution....those were inputs that had outputs Joe Average could relate to, daily.
To scream that we must do something against a trend that many of us would like, as in winters not so cold, put against a perspective of the fact that so much of America used to have two miles of ice, while the coastlines were a couple hundred miles further out than they are now.....what, d'ya want to refill Lake Missoula or something?
I am sure someone out there will accuse me of overly optimistic broadbrush treatment but facts are facts - we are better off in many ways than we were before. The trick now is to harness the energy that found solutions over the last forty years worth of problems and apply it to contemporary issues of food quality, energy production, and waste.
For nighttime entertainment, the Pollo's put on their catalogue night vision goggles and watch the undocumented immigrants scurry across the border, many with large packsacks full of mattress stuffing or green alfalfa bricks. Mr. Pollo is composting any of those green blocks he finds. It makes his veggies mellow.
Their new hobby is collecting plastic bags, and they have over 1300 business establishment logos represented in their collection. Birding got boring (sort of like an endless family reunion), and now they have a plastic bag life list. A grandson is beginning a collection of water bottles, although it takes a lot more room to catalogue and store them.
It will soon be too hot to be out of doors, so the Pollo's are getting ready to fill the RV with biodiesel and drive to Big Fork for the summer. They have a grandchild enrolled in summer school at Big Fork U.
The Pollos are called "Snowbirds" but they are not from the Leghorn tribe, and are just salt and pepper grey due to family with Plymouth Rock roots. They grow a garden at their summer place, and Mother Pollo cans grasshoppers that she baits in with the garden. You just can't get a good grade of bug in AZ in the winter. Unless, of course, you drink the water.
ta ta....summer is getting close. Or at least there is sun showing before 6:30 in the AM.....time to change the filter in grandpa's Depends.. and toss the old one on the compost. Have a Green Summer..
So called AGW is one example, despite million of research grants and all kinds of restrictions, guess what we still have short growing seasons in the north and longer ones in the south. We still have terrible winters and mild winters. Meanwhile billions have been spent researching and curing a problem that does not exist. The enviros can afford to live in bigger houses and use more resources all thanks to all of their very profitable research grants paid for by those of us they are trying to force to do without basics.
and you wonder why the youth does'nt care about the land.
8
I would say one reason that kids are not going enjoying the outdoors is because so much area has been shut off to families who can only take a day outing, and do not have the time or resources to hike everywhere.
Yes, I have concerns about abuse of our environment by commercial interests. However, I have a bigger concern about neglect, "unstewardship" and destruction by doing nothing.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center is a good scientific source which delves into the issue: http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html.
It concludes that "Greenhouse gases emitted through human activities and the resulting increase in global mean temperatures are the most likely underlying cause of the sea ice decline, but the direct cause is a complicated combination of factors resulting from the warming, and from climate variability."
It further concludes: "Examination of the long-term satellite record dating back to 1979 and earlier records dating back to the 1950s indicate that spring melt seasons have started earlier and continued for a longer period throughout the year (Serreze et al. 2007). Even more disquieting, comparison of actual Arctic sea ice decline to IPCC AR4 projections show that observed ice loss is faster than any of the IPCC AR4 models have predicted (Stroeve et al. 2007)."
Here's a lift:
"ExxonMobil is known to have invested over $23 million since 1998 to bankroll an entire movement of climate confusionists, including over 35 anti-science and right wing nonprofits, to divert attention away from the critical threat of climate disruption caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels.
The report, authored by Greenpeace climate campaigner Cindy Baxter,"
Greenpeace....now THERE's an honest broker.
And why isn't anyone noting Climateworks? 600 million A YEAR funding think tanks, "research," "grassroots" opposition to "inoculate" against new coal plant construction.
The "corporate" money in this case is chump change, against at least ten times more in funding (itself corporate in operation AND in origin) that is tax exempt et cetera. You'd think that with billions spent hyping "climate change" it would overwhelm all other political and social issues in the public mind.
Why not? Because nobody can relate to it in their daily lives. Why might that be? Because it's not seen as a problem, if seen at all. Because the "solution" is completely irrational, punitive and, when you get down to it, ineffective.
If you demand that people live a Soylent Green existence, you have to give them REAL reasons why it makes sense to do so. I've yet to see any effort made in that direction -- nobody has ever said "If you give up X, or do Y, then Z will in fact result."
The basic point of Mr. White's article is "that the decades-old argument for environmental protection based on the intrinsic value of nature is failing, and needs to be replaced with an ecosystem services argument (services that provide food, water, and fuel for humans)." This is an excellent topic of discussion.
My view is that you need both and that you need to couple advocacy efforts with education and work that gets people out to the land, to listen to and its rhythms, and to understand its value -- both intrinsic and extrinsic. It seems to me that too many people fall into the trap of thinking that just because they can google something somehow conveys understanding of how the world works.
The comments on this thread by the climate denier trolls are a case-in-point. If they had some basic understanding of climatology and ecology, they'd understand not only the science behind climate change, but the very real threat it poses to our planet and way of life. Whether you need drinking water, good wildlife habitat to hunt in, clean rivers to fish in, whether you value land and the environment because you want to be a good steward of this Earth, or whether this Earth deserves to be just because it deserves to co-exist right along with us flawed humans, basic awareness goes a long way.
But they don't. Instead, they operate from the assumption -- which they never second guess -- that our world and economy runs by fossil fuels and that it's so big there's no way we can devastate it beyond repair. Moreover, they fail to see how using energy efficiently and relying on renewable energy, like wind and solar, and having durable communities that respect the land, is a good thing.
Put differently, just because they've been inflamed and persuaded by right-wing deniers and fossil-fuel funded interests doesn't make them right. It only evidences their lack of awareness, wisdom, inability to transcend selfishness, and refusal to acknowledge the basic fact that mankind can do better, can live better. Most importantly, it evidences their inability to imagine a world where we don't risk the very fabric of our planet to sustain life -- a prerequisite of any parent who'd like to leave the world a bit better off for their children.
Ultimately, it seems that the climate deniers don't simply lack respect for the environment -- a product of their disconnect to it -- but lack respect for themselves. Who else would foul their own nest?
It may not strike you as kind of batty to be protesting global warming in a blizzard, but it does me. Research grants are big money, no matter who furnishes them.
If you'd like some facts, read the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change's reports (http://www.ipcc.ch/). Or read our own country's work (http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/saps).
@ Todd: I didn't realize that proof of climate change was contingent on whether you could grow tomatoes in Wyoming. But I digress. Warming has been confirmed, and here's a link for info on your area: http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/regional-climate-change-impacts/great-plains.
The key point is that warming is a long-term trend, and current climate change may be relatively minor, but the build up "warming in the pipeline" is significant and will play itself out over the next couple of centuries. Just because it's a long-range issue doesn't mean that we should wait until a crisis occurs. The key is to act now.
And a blizzard is a weather event. Just like a heat wave. Neither proves nor disproves global warming. But, if that's your reasoning, I expect a post proclaiming the reality of global warming when it's hot in Wyoming in the summertime. That said, I won't hold my breath.
that's all you ever do whine about how you can only take a day hike and theres not enough roads...no matter the article the same dishonest dribble.
Go whine about it with the rest of the global warming deniers/optimists, bat s*hit house crazy right wing nuts
the rest of the world will do the work while you cry about not being able to ride you atv into every single drainage and alpine park
pathetic.
Both sides are all about money and power and I choose to not subscribe to either's plans for world dominance. It looks like you have chosen the "if you're not with us, then you are against us" policy that worked soooo well for Bush Jr. *_eyeroll_*
I remember an article about Nature deficit disorder and you posted that public schools were'nt teaching the right things.
You taught your nephew or someone that there were no wolves in the rockies before the feds brought em in.
No matter the subject/article you just rant on with your right wing/motorized agenda.
Waaah I can't go any where becuase i can't hike all day
are you fing kidding me, national forests in MT are roaded all the over the place.
Be a man and quit whining like a child about BS.
anyone who supports wilderness is a from a big east coast city prejudiced nonsense.
This article was about youth's declining interest in nature not global warming or national forest mtorized roads.
The reasons for the decline are complex and far-reaching, however the way these right wing nutters represent the outdoors no wonder the youth does'nt want anything to do with out. When they think only backwoods, global warming denying, atv-beer guzzling idiots go in the woods why would they want to.
Of course Toa will say "oh there's not enough roads, they're lockin us out"
but he is full of BS and is obviuosly a lazy sack.
So will a minority of social progressives from a quickly shrinking minority have that much influence on how the world accepts the elite academic view of physical processes? People talk about what it will be like for their grandchildren, but failing to have children, there will be no grandchildren to be affected.
I've spent too much time witnessing and working with nature, either through my experience growing up on a farm alongside a river, doing restoration work in the mountains above my home, growing a garden, or trekking through the backcountry (to get back to the point of this article) to ignore the degradation to this world caused by the hand of humankind. We are capable, however, of such beautiful things. It's about time we re-connected with the rest of this fantastic world, took responsibility for the consequences of the last couple hundred years of industrialization, and took action to heal those wounds -- action which will only lead, to paraphrase Wendell Berry, to a wiser, saner culture than we have now.
Peace out.
I would recommend not making us in the middle your enemy. Results could be....ahem....catastrophic. We have open minds and, it appears, that the extremists do not.
Actually I do not believe the proponents believe it either. If they actually did, all of the conferences would be held by teleconferencing instead of all of the jets flying here there and everywhere, tons of bottled waters limos driving around getting 5 mpg. No one who truly believed an oldster keeping the temp at 75 in the winter was destroying the world as we know it would burn the kind of carbon that most enviros do. How may of those people live in 900 sf houses and dives a Focus or an Aveo? They jsut want an excuse to control other people and their assets.
another global warming denier. Well look there driving in limos and flying around so I don't have to change either.
The warming will be good with a longer growing season blab blah blah
The enviros use lots of carbon...wahhh
Todd your really an idiot.
Dueling messengers usually ends up with status quo. And a lot of dead messengers. Democracy.
So, the MIT types had better raise their messaging skills to a higher level, and find ways to send the message without all the garbage from their lesser intellectual friends. It is hard to sell it to a guy who says that there is no appreciable warming, because frost kills his plants at the same time each spring and fall. When the answer to his observation is a smarty pants attempt at demeaning his whole existence, all you have achieved is a "NO" vote for life on issues of your concern.
Shooting messengers is easy. Asking the public to accept that behavior from sharpshooters like Bozo or Emmett Kelly is asking a lot. The real problem is that the public is well aware that Congress only does what they get paid to do by lobbyists. Not knowing who is shoveling dough at your Congressman, woman or Senator, disbelieving is a safer option. We know we got health reform with no limits on litigation, law suits, and trial lawyer incomes, nor did we get the insurance pool expanded beyond our state borders. So we got the health care trial lawyers and insurance companies wanted, and they paid for it fair and square to the members of Congress, and to the President's next campaign.
I am certain that there are high priced whores working for high earning political officials who have ideas about global warming, because they are privy to small talk you and I are not. So better we go to high priced call girls for our information about global warming, climate change, and government's planned responses, and who is paying them to respond in the way they will. The whores will provide better information for a lot less money. And maybe better ancillary benefits.
How about that for cynical? Am I alone in my thinking? I think probably not. Science is bought and paid for. Period. Research is directed by money, at specific probable outcomes. For money, by money, to make more money. Academics support socialist progressive politics because that is where their money comes from. Follow the money.
I manage a farm. We are threatened with a new insect. A vinegar fruit fly that lays eggs in ripening fruit (as opposed to most fruit flies reproducing in rotting fruit). The pesticides available are limited and imperfect. Not doing any preventative activity is to lose the whole crop. I asked an agronomist if there is any activity in sex attractant trapping, or release of sterilized males as was the case in screw fly eradication. The agronomist said the protocols will be all about pesticides because the money for research will be provided mostly by chemical companies with a pesticide spray in mind to sell or create to sell. There is no money in other alternatives. A cynical answer? Not as much as a real one.
Climate, and government money, is driving university research, and the answers will be fashioned to create new financial instruments in which Wall Street might trade and make trillions. Climate change and the US Govt response will be driven by special interests who stand to make a shit load of money. The absolute smartest people coming out of university will not be in the labs, but working as analysts for investment firms and Wall Street banks. No matter how contrived it might be, the answer to climate change is financial, first and foremost. So the proposed solutions, workable or not, real or contrived, will be whatever Congress gets paid to address, and paid to legislate. Obama's Chief of Staff is famously known for saying "Don't waste a crisis." Bright guy. And there might be brighter ones on Wall Street who are slipping him their ideas along with the cash to run the next campaign. To stay in business in the 'hood, you pay the vigorish to the collectors and you are safe from petty crime and cops. To stay in power in our Government, you take the vigorish from the lobby, and use it to run the next campaign.
I don't trust the scientific answer and I don't trust the political answer. And rightly so. The Screwing of America is ongoing. Or like that woman on the YouTube video running around. She was asked by a tv reporter on the street if her cloche hat was her secret to keeping warm (obviously an icy and snowy day). She replied: "No! I have no secrets. I am angry. I have to go to work to make a living. I would rather I had a private income. I would be getting laid. Well, and often." All so matter of fact. And she strode off to the bus stop. It did not appear the climate change was paramount in her mind.
Before that there was the Jupiter effect where two "Respected Scientists" told us we would all die in 1982. When it didn't happen they said oops we made a mistake. Thanks for the millions we made on the book though.
Now we have the world's most highly respected Nobel prize winning climatoligist, Al Gore, telling us we'll all die if we follow his lead and jet all over the world while maintaining a number of mansions that use more energy than a small city.
How can man made global warming be viewed as anything but a poorly told dirty joke with a messed up punch line?
Recent "Climategate" scandals have turned out to be nothing of the sort, with independent inquiries clearing the scientists of the charge that they fixed or manipulated data. In short, the vast body of data says climate change is real and largely caused by burning of fossil fuels.
The apathy that Courtney's article addresses is real and troubling. In the face of so much manufactured doubt, delay and denial, it is all too human to retreat into apathy.
Similarly, recreation fees discourage many from recreating on public lands, so lack of opportunity does equal lack of interest. The American Recreation Council has been working for decades to convert public lands into a "pay to play" environment in which concessionaires privately profit by catering to mechanized recreationists.
It is absurd to comment about "elite" backpackers when an ATV, snowmobile or ski-doo can cost thousands of dollars.
Public land agencies have been starved of proper funding by conservative politicians, which is why recreation fees have become the alternative to just shutting down.
I do applaud programs designed to get children outdoors and involved with the environment. We need them to be interested and involved with the environment that produces clean air, clean water and other environmental/economic services.
You just completely blew off the FACT that these evil conservative think tanks and oil companies are being outspent on the AGW hype war by at least 10 to 1 by ONE single "nonprofit philanthropic educational foundation" -- Climateworks nee Energy nee Duke nee Pew nee Hewlett nee Packard ney ney neeeeigh. Do your journalistic-integrity thing and check it out.
So too did you completely blow off the fact that "proper funding" of land management agencies could come from a series of viable multiple-use products...not just recreation, but yep, mining, timber, petroleum, grazing, movie making. The extractive four in fact cross- subsidized the recreation for a long, long time, it was a great free ride for public land recreationists, even Greens, and COULD have gone on pritnear forever, but no, sharing a shared resource made just too much sense and had to be stopped.
Never mind that in a free society it shouldn't matter in the end how much money is spent, the truth should prevail....which depending on your perspective on the topic du jour, may be either a good or bad thing.
You wrote: "I would say one reason that kids are not going enjoying the outdoors is because so much area has been shut off to families who can only take a day outing, and do not have the time or resources to hike everywhere."
Where do you come up with this stuff? When you say "because so much has been shut off to families," what are you talking about? Do you live in the American West. Our family just spent the weekend out on a couple of different free public land hiking trails (among almost unlimited options available to us) and enjoyed every second. The abundance of public land is one of the reasons we choose to live in the West. Having grown up in Minnesota where most of the land is private, I can tell you that those options do not exist. If you want to know why kids are not getting out, don't blame the enviros. The blame starts with parents who are too lazy, too obese or too unimaginative to suggest an alternative to computer screens and couch potatodom. Read Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods. If you live in the Rocky Mountain West and can't figure out a free or inexpensive way to recreate outdoors with your family on public land (even getting into national parks is dirt cheap), then you have no one to blame but yourself.
When Govt can knowingly allow Corporations to knowingly kill We the People, and do nothing to warn, inform and protect the people...Then We the People have a Govt just as GUILTY as the Corporations that kill us.Now you tell me, who has given up on who??? Good thing this Mike Crill dude has been around for years telling all who will listen to stay away from Libby Mt. Not safe to anything that breathes and NO CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND...Now just think...What the world and Libby would be like if more people like me cared as I do to speak the truth to save lives and they call me the nut....Called Trust. Once you lose that nothing matters...specially OUR Govt.What do you all think??? Do YOU even care????
http://www.harryrclarke.com/2010/01/03/global-warming-the-issue-attention-cycle/
"The Pew Climate Centre have shown that over the last year or so a decreased proportion of US citizens believe climate change is a serious public policy issue and a reduced number believe there is solid evidence that anthropogenic warming is occurring. Climate change delusionists might be credited with inducing these changed opinions but the role of the media is also important.
Andrew Revkin points out that climate change coverage in the US media peaked in 2007 – indeed it has become the greatest story rarely told. Part of the reason is the issue-attention cycle discussed in relation to the environment by Anthony Downs* in 1972. According to this theory an event occurs triggering public interest in an environmental issue and then – even though the problem is unresolved – other issues replace it as its novelty value wears off and boredom with the concern sets in."