The results of the Report of the Virginia Climate Change Survey were released during a panel discussion held at the Miller Center of Public Affairs last night.
The survey, which was conducted through telephone calls to more than 660 Virginia residents during September, sought to measure public opinion concerning climate change within the commonwealth.
The panel consisted of the survey’s authors, Christopher Borick and Barry Rabe; L. Preston Bryant, Jr., Virginia secretary of natural resources and former Virginia general assembly member; Vivian Thomson, University assistant politics professor and director of the University’s Environmental Thought and Practice program; and John H. Gibbons, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under former President Bill Clinton.
Former Democratic Gov. Gerald Baliles, who is director of the Miller Center, introduced the panel and said the Virginia survey was conducted along with an identical survey concerning climate change for the United States. He noted that climate change is an issue facing local, state, national and international governments.
The Virginia survey, Rabe said, sought to gather a public voice about climate change both globally and locally while also expressing the public’s opinion on climate change policies that should be implemented by the commonwealth. Some of these policies concern clean coal, nuclear power and solar energy, as well as reducing greenhouse emissions.
Rabe said one reason for conducting the survey in Virginia is the ease with which interest in climate issues can be fostered at a local, rather than national, level.
“International collaboration and national collaboration seems hard to develop,” Rabe said. “And instead states are on the move for climate change.”
Despite Rabe’s assertion, when questioned about the level of “responsibility for taking actions to reduce global warming” for federal, state and local governments, 50 percent of Virginian responders said the federal government has “a great deal of responsibility,” while 36 percent and 29 percent said state and local governments, respectively, face that level of responsibility. Nineteen percent of responses indicated that local governments face “no responsibility” in this area. Though respondents varied in their beliefs about which level of government ought to assume responsibility, and how much, 61 percent said global warming is a “very serious problem” that 72 percent of respondents thought required “immediate” government action. These responses are tempered, though, by the fact 38 percent of survey respondents “strongly agree” that “it is my state’s responsibility to address the problem” if the federal government fails to address climate change issues.
Rabe said the Virginians surveyed believe there has been an overall increase in climate change during recent decades; 75 percent of those surveyed, and 71 percent of Americans citizens surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2008, believe, from what they have “read and heard ... there is solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer,” according to the survey. Borick explained that the survey also found the major factor impacting this belief for those surveyed was personal experience with warmer local temperatures throughout the last decade; 25 percent of those surveyed responded that “warmer local temperatures/personal experience” was the “primary factor” behind their belief in rising global temperatures, according to the survey, followed by “melting glaciers and polar ice” at 21 percent.
Rabe also reported that the majority of those surveyed approved of the climate change policies presented in the survey; more than 49 percent of respondents “strongly” supported the “creation of [a] renewable portfolio standard,” “increased support for clean coal technology,” “increase[d] fuel efficiency standards for automobiles,” and “energy efficiency requirements for residential and commercial buildings.” On the other hand, 55 percent strongly opposed “increased gasoline taxes” and 37 percent strongly opposed “increased fossil fuel taxes.” Overall, only two proposed potential initiatives were strongly opposed by more than 20 percent of respondents, while nine proposals were strongly supported by at least 23 percent of respondents, seven of which at least 30 percent of respondents strongly supported. Rabe noted that these results could impact future policymaking in Virginia concerning climate change.
Gibbons noted that he believes it is important that citizens “merge belief and fact in order to create a consensus to create public policy,” which he said is what Borick and Rabe accomplished in their survey.
Charles Battig, a local retired doctor and discussion attendee, questioned this belief, noting that those surveyed are not scholars or scientists on the subject of climate change and therefore have misconceived notions about the climate change issue. Battig said he was most concerned that the people being questioned predominantly based their beliefs on their own experiences, meaning they are not the best people to incite the introduction of policy concerning climate change.
Borick and Rabe said, though, those surveyed still felt very strongly about improving efforts to decrease the carbon dioxide emissions and regulation of toxins they believe to have caused climate change, and their opinion should be heeded by the government.
The results of Borick’s and Rabe’s national survey will be revealed at the National Conference on Climate Governance hosted at the Miller Center Dec. 11 and 12.
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