The pantheon of gurus over at the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog were tasked this week with unpacking a recent Gallup poll that found Americans to be less concerned about the environment than they have been at any other time in the last 20 years. Editor Amy Harder asked the panel what can be made of the numbers and what the polling may mean for a federal response to climate change. RFF Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow Mark Cohen weighed in with his thoughts on the poll in a response titled, Be Wary of Raw Rankings.
According to Cohen, present interest levels don’t necessarily correlate to the public’s willingness to pay to avoid the adverse consequences of climate change:
Only two percent of respondents list the environment as a major concern. Yet, this is the same number that mentioned the war in Iraq, and twice the number that mention crime! Putting the public’s mixed feelings about the war aside, research clearly indicates that the public is willing to pay for programs that have been shown to reduce crime, such as early childhood education, drug treatment, or more police. Thus, be wary of interpreting these raw rankings and poll numbers. They might tell us what is top of mind and of highest priority, but they don’t tell us what the public is willing to pay for.
Highlighting a recent international survey of willingness to pay to avoid various levels of global temperature rise, Cohen went on to explain that some 92 percent of Swedes and 71 percent of Americans are willing to pay:
The average amount people are willing to pay to avoid a 4oF temperature rise was $306/year in Sweden and $204/year in the U.S. —amounting to between 2-3% of the respondent’s per-capita income. They were willing to pay even more if temperature increases could be held to 3oF: $330 per year in the U.S. and $552 per in Sweden. These levels of expenditure are in line with most of the economic estimates of the cost of climate change mitigation—generally thought to be between 1-3 percent of GDP.
Read Cohen’s entire response on the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog here.
