By important, I mean people who have their hands on the levers of power, more or less, in areas that affect energy policy.

I don’t really care if Uncle Bob doesn’t accept climate change. Uncle Bob votes for right wing yahoos anyway, that wasn’t going to change. Why should it matter what Uncle Bob thinks?

Unless Uncle Bob is a top policy actor involve din climate and energy issues at the federal level or in Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, or Ohio. Right?

The Climate Constituencies Project looked at these folks (Uncle Bob’s colleagues as described) to see where they stand on climate change.

… there is an overwhelming level of consensus around the science of climate change among policy actors at the Federal level and in these four swing states. In fact, even with all of this talk of climate denial, opinions have gotten even stronger and the numbers have gone up since summer 2010 when we conducted a previous round of this research. Across the four swing states and the federal level, there are no statistically significant differences in opinions on these questions.

It turns out there is real debate in the area of climate change and energy, but it is about what to do, not that something needs to be done.

When asked about potential policy instruments to address climate change and energy options, however, there was much less agreement. Opinions around a potential cap-and-trade bill were statistically significantly different across the swing states and the federal levels, with policy actors in Florida and at the federal level having much lower opinions than the other states.

You can read more about it here.

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In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
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