Public Attitudes toward Climate Science and Climate Policy in Federal Systems: Canada and the United States Compared¹

Abstract

Multilevel governance poses several challenges for the politics of climate change. On the one hand, the unequal distribution of power and interests can serve as a barrier to implementing coherent policy at a federal level. On the other, these features also enable policy leadership among sub-federal units. In the context of wide variation in climate policy at both national and sub-federal levels in Canada and in the United States, this paper utilizes an original data set to examine public attitudes and perceptions toward climate science and climate change policy in two federal systems. Drawing on national and provincial/ state level data from telephone surveys administered in the United States and in Canada, the paper provides insight into where the public stands on the climate change issue in two of the most carbonintensive federal systems in the world. The paper includes the first directly comparable public opinion data on how Canadians and Americans form their opinions regarding climate matters and provides insight into the preferences of these two populations regarding climate policies at both the national and sub-federal levels. Key findings are examined in the context of growing policy experiments at the sub-federal level in both countries and limited national level progress in the adoption of climate change legislation.

Political ideology and views about climate change in the European Union

“…Eight of these studies, which typically focus on respondents' political party identification, analyze data from the general public of a single country: Australia (Tranter 2011(Tranter , 2013, Canada (Lachapelle et al 2012), 3 and the UK (Poortinga et al 2011, Whitmarsh 2011, Clements 2012a, 2012b, Carter and Clements 2015. The remaining three studies (Tjernström and Tietenberg 2008, Kvaløy et al 2012, Tranter and Booth 2015, which focus on respondents' leftright ideology, perform cross-national analyses on data from a wide range of countries, but are limited by their use of single-item indicators of climate change views.…”

Is Support for International Climate Action Conditional on Perceptions of Reciprocity? Evidence From Survey Experiments in Canada, the Us, Norway, and Sweden

“…Importantly, this e®ect is similar across Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, marking an important contrast with the partisan divides that are regularly found in studies of American public opinion regarding climate change. 12 While support for unilateral, domestic climate action is relatively strong among the public in advanced industrialized countries, regime design features still play a role. A study based on survey experiments 13¯n ds that costs, cost distribution, participation, and enforcement matter for treaty support among subjects in the US, UK, France, and Germany.…”

Faith that science will solve environmental problems: does it hurt or help?

“…Social structure traits and social class are the most likely correlates, though at different strengths of the relationship (European Commission 2005, p. 41, Lachapelle et al 2012). We assembled a set of standard demographic characteristics that are routinely included in research, and examined their relationships with faith in science in the ISSP data sets.…”