Natural scientists warn that global climate change is a risk with
potentially devastating consequences for human societies and
natural ecosystems around the world. Meeting this challenge
will require a concerted national and international effort to
dramatically reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. It
will also, however, require public support for political leaders
and government mitigation policies, and committed action by
individual citizens and consumers.

This dissertation examined whether the American public
perceives global warming as a real threat, supports public
mitigation policies, or has taken individual actions to mitigate
climate change. It found that measures of affect, imagery and
cultural worldviews predict public risk perceptions, policy
preferences, and individual behaviors. Finally, it used affective
image analysis to identify several distinct “interpretive
communities” within the American public.

The data comes from three surveys: a national survey of the
American public completed in February, 2003 (n=673); a
statewide survey of the Oregon public completed in February,
2001 (n=900); and a survey of student activists at the 2000
World Climate Conference (COP6) in The Hague, Netherlands
(n=112).

This research describes an American public with broad concern
about global warming, strong bipartisan support for
international treaties and national mitigation policies, and strong
opposition to higher energy or gasoline prices to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Relatively few Americans have
undertaken individual mitigation behaviors. While global
warming does have negative connotations for most Americans,
the thoughts and images evoked by this term primarily reflect
impacts temporally and spatially distant from most people’s
lives. Critically, this research also finds that Americans do not
currently associate global warming with any impacts on human
health. Overall, these results suggest that American public
opinion about global warming is at a critical turning point.
Americans are aware and concerned about global climate change
and predisposed to support political leaders and mitigation
policies across party lines. Global warming is not a national
priority, however, and Americans have yet to confront the
tradeoffs that will ultimately be required.