Abstract
The earth’s warming climate poses many risks to human beings and other forms of life on earth. Yet solving this building crisis involves a temporal tradeoff: make costly policy changes now to avert the worst future disasters. Existing research suggests that this will be difficult -environmental policy attitudes are stable, polarized, predominantly acquired through partisan elite messaging, and only moderately responsive in the short-term to large shocks like exposure to catastrophic environmental events. But what about susceptibility to climate extremes like rising sea levels that can render entire communities uninhabitable within our lifetimes? Is living in a coastal community that is susceptible to such existential risk associated with stronger support for climate mitigation policies? Using a variety of original and publicly available surveys from 2010 to present, we establish a clear link between susceptibility to sea-level rise and support for climate mitigation policy, offer evidence for several potential mechanisms, and show that the results are robust to a variety of methodological and substantive choices.
Presenters
Andrew ReevesProfessor, Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, United States Dino Christenson
Faculty, Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
PUBLIC OPINION, SEA RISE, HOUSING, CLIMATE CHANGE
