Donnelle Eller

deller@dmreg.com

Climate change is one of the most polarizing issues in the nation, with sides often divided along party lines. But that rift fails to reflect where most Americans land on the issue and prevents real discussion about possible solutions, a Yale researcher says.

Most Americans — and Iowans — fall somewhere in the middle, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.

“The people who are most vocal about the issue are on the edges” — alarmists who say the planet is being destroyed by climate change, or people who deny the planet is warming, he said.

They “tend to throw verbal rocks at each other. They can’t understand how the other side could be so stupid,” Leiserowitz said.

He will be the keynote speaker at the Iowa Environmental Council’s annual meeting at Drake University in Des Moines on Thursday.

“The louder the discussion gets, the more it becomes an issue like politics or religion, where you just don’t want to talk about it, for fear you’ll get in a fight,” said Leiserowitz, whose group conducts research on the public’s perception and knowledge about climate change.

The country has to get beyond that, he said. “The climate system just doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn’t care if you’re a liberal or a conservative.

“It’s not like the drought that gripped the Great Plains a couple years ago was only destroying the livelihoods of Democrats and not Republicans. It’s not like the floods that sweep the Mississippi River are only affecting conservatives and not liberals.”

Leiserowitz said America tends to fall into one of six areas on climate change:

• Alarmed (16 percent): “They’re convinced climate change is real, convinced it is human caused. They strongly support action. However, many of them aren’t clear what can be done about it — what they can do individually or what collectively we can do.”

• Concerned (29 percent): “These people believe climate change is happening, it’s human-caused but they tend to see it as distant — distant in time, with the impact not felt for a generation or more; and distant in space. This is about polar bears or developing countries. But it’s not happening in the United States, not in my state, not in my city, not to my friends or family.”

• Cautious (25 percent): “They’re still on the fence. They’re paying attention, but they haven’t made up their mind. Is it happening or not? Is it human-caused or is it natural? Is it a serious problem or is it over blown?”

• Disengaged (9 percent): “They’ve heard of it but don’t know anything about it. They say, ‘I don’t know what causes it. I don’t know what the impacts are. I don’t know what the solutions are. I don’t think about it. My friends don’t talk about it.’ ”

• Doubtful (13 percent): “People who think it’s probably not happening. If it is happening, it’s natural. It’s nothing humans had anything to do with. It’s nothing we can do anything about. I don’t pay attention. I don’t see it as a risk.”

• Dismissers (8 percent): “These are people who are convinced it’s not happening, it’s not human- caused. In fact, most of them are what we’d lovingly called conspiracy theorists. They say it’s a hoax. It’s scientists making up data. It’s a plot by the United Nations to try to take away American sovereignty. It’s a get-rich scheme by Al Gore and friends and many other narratives.”

Where Americans live also helps frame how they feel about climate change, Leiserowitz said.

“As a swing state, Iowa tends to be pretty close to the average when it comes to American views,” he said. “It’s not a California, where people are much more engaged with the issue. But it’s also not Wyoming, where people tend to be much more skeptical. It’s pretty close to the middle, which is why it’s contested territory.”

Leiserowitz hopes that more Americans become alarmed about climate change, so the nation can begin finding solutions.

“We have to come together to figure out how to best solve this issue,” he said. “We can have a robust and energetic and much-needed debate over what the best solutions are, but we have to get past the arguments over whether the problem exists.”

“That just holds us back.”

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Registration for the Iowa Environmental Council’s annual conference begins at 7:30 a.m. Thursday. The event will be held in the upper level of Olmsted Center at Drake University.