The heat is on democracy

After Superstorm Sandy smashed the United States’ eastern seaboard days before the presidential election, it was a commonplace observation that climate change had been ignored in the campaign. That was neither strictly correct nor the full story. But climate change was on the back foot in the 2012 contest.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney mocked President Barack Obama’s 2008 climate-change rhetoric in his convention speech. To derisive cheers from the Republican delegates, he concluded, ‘‘President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet’’. He then pivoted to the economy which he believed would win the election: ‘‘My promise is to help you and your family.’’

Obama replied in his convention speech: ‘‘Climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future.’’

That was a rare, specific reference to climate change. In the three presidential debates climate change was not mentioned. Romney and Obama instead competed to be champions of the fossil-fuel industries. Romney declared he ‘‘liked coal’’.

Obama backed renewables but never directly in a climate-change context. He stoutly defended his fossil-fuel credentials with claims such as, ‘‘we’re actually drilling more on public land than the previous administration’’ and, ‘‘I am all for pipelines; I’m all for oil production’’. During the third debate, former Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore somewhat plaintively tweeted: ‘‘Where is global warming in this debate? Climate change is an urgent foreign policy issue.’’

Post-Sandy, Obama briefly reprised his grander 2008 positioning in his victory speech, referring to the ‘‘destructive power of a warming planet’’.

There was no question that the political calculus for Romney and Obama was that coal votes in the swing states of Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania took precedence over climate change.

Polls around the world since 2008 have generally shown both falling belief that climate change is happening and that it is largely the result of human activity.

There are, though, signs of at least a slight recent pickup in concern in the US. A Pew October survey showed 67 per cent thought there was ‘‘solid evidence that the Earth’s temperature had been getting warmer over the past few decades’’. This was up 10 per cent on 2009 but still 10 per cent below the 2007 figure.

A Gallup March 2012 survey showed 53 per cent thought human activities were responsible for the rise in world temperatures and 41 per cent natural causes. The 2011 figures were 50 per cent human activities, 46 per cent natural causes; and the peak for climate change in 2007 was 61 per cent human activities; 35 per cent natural causes.

New Zealand’s trend is different. A UMR June survey showing that 48 per cent thought human activities were responsible and 37 per cent natural causes was the lowest-ever rating for ‘‘human activity’’ in an intermittent series going back to 2002. This was well below the 2004 peak of 71 per cent human activities/19 per cent natural causes.

Frank Luntz attributes the change from 2008 to the struggling US economy. He considered that, faced with a choice ‘‘of saving the planet 100 years from now or the economy today, the US people choose the economy today’’. ‘‘If there is no money at the end of the week it’s just a theory you cannot see, touch or feel.’’

There has to be doubt, however, whether a return to prosperity or even increasingly frequent severe weather events will lead to meaningful political responses.

Qualitative research by UMR in Australasia, even at the peak of declared public concern around 2007, never showed the commitment necessary to underpin support for a government actually addressing climate change in any way that imposed costs or serious inconvenience on voters.

Climate change is a tough political issue as voters have to trust experts. We lack the capacity to judge on the highly complex issues of whether it is occurring and what its impact will be.

Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Centre, describes climate change as ‘‘the ultimate preference challenge requiring sacrifice now for future generations even if there is some uncertainty’’.

He notes that a democracy making difficult decisions works on a different timetable to the climate. ‘‘There is no benefit to a politician who wants to be elected and re-elected. They won’t be around to get the reward.’’

It is a critical and challenging question for democracies to decide to what extent public opinion should sway public policy on such a complex issue that potentially decides the future of humans.

Politicians have followed public opinion. When the issue was more fashionable in 2007, the Australian Liberals supported an emissions trading scheme (ETS). They have flipped completely. New Zealand’s National Party opposed the Labour-led government’s ETS in 2008 but, despite obvious scepticism, still promised their weaker version. They have since taken every opportunity to weaken the scheme and will not sign up to the next Kyoto Protocol.

Can democracies on short electoral cycles develop meaningful responses to future problems such as climate change. The 2012 presidential election did not offer much hope.