More than 60 percent of Californians — including a majority in every region of the state, from the inland areas to the coast — say global warming is already affecting California, a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California finds.
But one group of Californians is much less convinced: Republicans. A majority say they don’t believe that climate change is happening and that they don’t think it will be a serious problem in the future. They also support expanding fossil fuel production — from increasing offshore oil drilling along California’s coast to expanding fracking.
“There are very strong and persistent partisan differences,” said Mark Baldassare, CEO of the PPIC. “There is generally a very substantial majority of Californians who feel their way of life is threatened by what’s occurring.”
Baldassare said that Republicans are taking their cues from national leaders, including GOP members of Congress and presidential candidates, many of whom say that the science of climate change remains unsettled or that the issue is overblown.
“There are times when the politics does trump the science,” he said.
All of the major scientific institutions in the world that study climate and weather, from NASA to the National Academy of Sciences to the World Meteorological Organization, say that Earth is getting warmer, in large part because of the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2014 was the hottest year in California history and world history back to 1880, when modern records were first kept; the 10 hottest years globally have all occurred since 1998.
When it comes to the partisan divide, a study by Duke University last year found that when conservatives and liberals evaluate major societal problems they tend to deny problems exist if they don’t like the potential solutions.
In the survey, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people were read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees this century. When more pollution regulations or a tax on carbon emissions was held out as the solution, only 22 percent of Republicans said they believed temperatures would rise that much. But when they were told free market solutions, such as innovative technology, was the solution, 55 percent of Republicans agreed with the scientific statement.
Liberals also tended to downplay the frequency of violent home break-ins when it conflicted with their positions on gun control, the researchers found.
“Political beliefs are so much more than beliefs about facts,” said Troy Campbell, a researcher at the Duke Fuqua School of Business and lead author of the study. “It’s not just the way you think the way the world is; it’s the way you want the world to be — and the way you have identified yourself. If somebody tells you the solution to a huge problem is not your ideology, it is a massive threat to who you are as a person and the way you see the world.”
According to the new poll, 62 percent of California residents say the warming climate is having an impact on California today, and 64 percent believe global warming has contributed to the current drought.
Fifty-two percent of state residents called climate change a “very serious” threat to the state’s future, and 27 percent said it is “somewhat serious.” Democrats (66 percent) were more likely than independents (51 percent) and much more likely than Republicans (26 percent) to call the threat “very serious.”
The survey of 1,702 California adults from July 12-21 had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Kaitlyn MacGregor, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, said Republicans in the state are wary of the issue because they are worried it will mean more government regulation.
“A lot of Republicans are very concerned about the impact on jobs,” she said. “We are talking about greenhouse gas emissions and cars and people’s ability to travel and how it is going to impact industry. A huge part of this is going to be government regulation.”
But Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, maintained that increased regulation will result in more jobs, as well as cleaner air and water.
“The Republican Party has marginalized itself by taking some of the stands it has, including its refusing to acknowledge the hardship that climate change is going to impose on the state,” she said.
As temperatures have steadily warmed, scientists have documented that the sea level has risen 8 inches at the Golden Gate over the last century, forest fires have increased in intensity and glaciers are melting around the world.
California has passed the most far-reaching climate rules in the nation, requiring major industries to buy and trade credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The poll found 69 percent of Californians support that law, although just 46 percent of Republicans do.
Sixty-four percent of Californians also favor the state passing stricter climate rules than the federal government, with Democrats (75 percent) and independents (65 percent) more likely than Republicans (43 percent) to be in favor.
Although Californians of all parties said they support increasing tax credits for electric vehicles and solar power, 62 percent of Republicans favored expanding offshore oil drilling in California and 53 percent favored more hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Only 27 percent of Democrats favored more offshore drilling, and 22 percent of Democrats favored more fracking.
The poll also found Californians continue to be concerned about the drought, with 68 percent saying the water supply is a big problem and 82 percent saying Brown’s requirement that urban residents cut water use 25 percent is “the right amount” or “not enough.”
Ominously, however, 64 percent said they don’t know what their own city’s conservation target is under those state mandates.
“Isn’t that incredible?” remarked Baldassare. “The information is either not being transmitted by local water districts or else it isn’t being understood. It doesn’t seem people are getting the information they need.”
Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN
