Articles by David Roberts

PIPA poll: The impotence of mere belief

A big new poll from the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows widespread public belief in the phenomenon of global warming and broad support for action to fight it, even if that action hurts the economy (via Mooney on Scienceg8.)

I'll put some excerpts from the poll summary below the fold, but first a few caveats.

• Heed the wise words of Roger Pielke Jr., who points out that majorities have believed in global warming for years:
  

  ...the battle over public opinion about the existence of global warming has been won. Efforts made trying to convince the public that global warming is "real" are pretty much wasted on the convinced. The public overwhelmingly believes global warming to be real and consequential.

• Politically informed people tend to project their habits on others. The fact the the public says it believes in global warming, or that it supports a cap-and-trade system, doesn't mean that people have individually sat down, surveyed the science, assessed the policy possibilities, and come to considered conclusions. People more or less parrot conventional wisdom.
• Because they are parroting conventional wisdom, it doesn't matter much to them, and they don't follow it very closely. Polls are always finding widespread support for progressive policies, but conservatives keep winning elections because elections aren't fought over policies.
• One hesitates to sound cynical, but nevertheless: Never underestimate the ignorance of the American public. As you will read below the fold, almost half the respondents believe that Bush supports Kyoto. People just by and large know very little about what politicians support, and even less about what politicians are actually doing. Talk about global warming floats about the media and culture, and Average Joe and Jane assume that somebody somewhere is doing something about it.

What greens should get from this poll is not a thrill of hope that the tipping point has finally arrived. It was always a pipe dream that some magical study would come along to finally-once-and-for-all prove that global warming exists, and voi la, the world would change.

The public is already convinced, and has been for some time. What we need now are local activism, fresh stories to tell, innovative policies, dramatic representations, success stories, unflagging political engagement ... all that stuff. It's still going to be a long, hard slog to get where we need to go. But if nothing else, this poll shows that the raw materials are there to work with.

Now, some excerpts:

Portland and vanity

Re: the previous post, another quote from the Portland guy caught my eye:

Mr. Sten added that Portland's officials were able to curb carbon emissions only because the steps they took were intrinsically popular and cheap, serving other purposes like reducing traffic congestion or saving on electrical costs. "I haven't seen that much willingness even among our environmentalists," he said, "to do huge masochistic things to save the planet."

Two things to note here, related to my post on hypocrisy from yesterday:

• Sten hasn't seen much "willingness even among environmentalists to do masochistic things to save the planet." Me neither. There are people who will sacrifice amenities and conveniences to live a life of environmental virtue, but they are now, and will always be, in the small minority. Welcome to homo sapiens.
• But that's okay. The people of Portland are leading lives of increasing environmental virtue just by living in Portland. Thanks to some savvy organizing and good government, Portland has made structural changes -- new traffic lights, more transit routes, more bike trails, etc. -- that make extraordinary individual sacrifice unnecessary. They are making environmental virtue the path of least resistance.

What's the lesson?

Get involved in your community. Organize. Write letters to the editor. Run for city council. Join a campaign. Inform others. Get informed. Vote.

Change the structure of our collective life. All else is vanity.

Portland, emissions cuts, and the economy

I've had words with Nicholas Kristof before, but I suppose it's to his credit that he's finally discovered -- and publicized, in a way a lil' rag like Grist never could -- the fact that reducing greenhouse emissions is a profitable enterprise (via Gil Friend). It does not hurt the economy. It helps. Cities that do it save money and make themselves more desirable places to live and work. See: Portland.

"Portland's efforts refute the thesis that you can't make progress without huge economic harm," says Erik Sten, a city commissioner. "It actually goes all the other way - to the extent Portland has been successful, the things that we were doing that happened to reduce emissions were the things that made our city livable and hence desirable."

Putting caps on CO2 emissions would help the overall economy and the public, but it would hurt a few select industries. That's what Bush means when he says Kyoto would "destroy the economy" -- he means, "hurt my campaign contributors." Serving favored business interests is the driving principle of this administration, and Bush is willing to do anything -- even publicly snub Tony Blair, his closest and staunchest ally -- to serve that principle.

See also Matt Yglesias on the same subject.

Still more Kelo

My opinion on SCOTUS' Kelo decision has softened somewhat since my initial outrage, but it still strikes me as, on balance, a Bad Thing.

Once recent strain of argument I find pretty convincing is that Kelo will not, in fact, enable good urban planning (one of the purported reasons many liberals defend it). Andy alluded to this argument here. See also this Planetizen piece from Samuel Staley:

To illustrate Kelo's potential damage, recall that its precedent, Berman v. Parker, substantially relaxed constraints on takings of private property in 1954, unleashing a wave of urban renewal that cleared large swaths of America's cities in the late 20th century. The results, even many planners now believe, were devastating for communities. Many areas cleared for urban renewal were never redeveloped, but affordable housing and many potentially vibrant neighborhoods were bulldozed. Not surprisingly, critics now refer to urban renewal as "slum removal" and cynics refer to this period as "negro removal". The Court's reasoning in Kelo grants cities and public officials even broader powers to clear neighborhoods and force families from homes and businesses than those current existing from Berman.

On his blog, City Comforts, David Sucher argues at some length that eminent design is not required for good urban planning -- he prefers many small development projects to a few large, bloated ones -- and that Dems are missing the a great political opportunity (I'd offer specific links, but there are too many).

Kelo's a fascinating issue -- it cuts across our established political divisions and produces very strange bedfellows (for instance, Sucher finds himself agreeing with conservative John Tierney). Much to ponder.