“Our results echo other recent poll data showing that Americans are growing more concerned about climate change,” write the authors of a recent 2008 Porter Novelli/George Mason University poll on the subject. This was a major effort: The authors surveyed 12,000 adults (most pollsters just survey 1,000) and 1,000 children (which most pollster don’t try to reach).
And in two other key areas, the results echo the findings of other studies in the Water Words collection:
#1: Global Warming Is An Issue of Relative Consensus
Analyzing the responses by gender, age, race, and other factors, the authors concluded “…on the whole, we found their demographic similarities to be more striking their differences.” This is the pattern for environmental issues generally, not just for global warming.
#2: You Must Warn AND Encourage
The report clearly validates one of the fundamental principles of the Water Words That Work method: It’s as important to convince people that their actions matter as it is to convince them that the problem is real.
The authors found that those who believe that global warming is real and dangerous, and also have confidence in their ability to make a difference participate in many conservation behaviors. However, those who believe global warming is real, but lack confidence in their ability to make a difference, participate in far fewer conservation behaviors. That’s common sense, but nature protection and pollution control experts routinely invest more effort in proving the problem rather than the solution. This report provides fresh insight into why that’s a mistake.
Here at Water Words That Work, we have an elaborate formula to convince people they can make a difference: You tell them: “You can make a difference, here’s how…”
Coming soon, I’ll blog about the findings in this research that don’t support my own deeply held beliefs! 
Well, after being a member of the River Management Society for many years, I finally made it to one of the conferences. Here is the PowerPoint for my presentation “Making Rivers Relevant to New Audiences.” Hat tip to Liz Lacy at the National Park Service for organizing this fascinating discussion.
I am a loyal Trader Joe’s customer. But when I stopped in today, my local branch was proudly displaying one of my least favorite words: “Sustainable,” a word documented to exclude or puzzle many (if not most) of our fellow citizens.
Why would Trader Joe’s do this? Because according to Scarborough Research, the typical Trader Joe’s shopper is:
…a college-educated, white homeowner with a median age of 44 and a median household income of $64,000. Almost evenly divided among married people and singles, females and males, two-thirds have no kids at home.
So flouting snobby vocabulary is OK for Trader Joe’s. If you appreciate that term, you probably have the income and tastes for what Trader Joe’s sells. Trader Joe’s doesn’t cater to people with junior college or high school educations, or to people who punch time cards and wear hard hats or uniforms to work. For people like this, puzzling signs on the wall send a subtle signal that they might get more respect down the street at Safeway.
And when nature protection and pollution control organizations flout elite vocabulary like “sustainable,” “watershed,” and “hydrograph” in our public-facing communiations, we’re effectively doing the same thing — sending well-meaning but less priveledged people down the street to the humane society, the homeless shelter, and the neighborhood watch – where people speak their language and everybody feels welcome and important.
Is what’s right for Trader Joe’s right for us?
In honor of National Groundwater Awareness Week, here’s a funny story that a reader named Simon in New York submitted:
In our area we have a lot of people who move up here from more urbanized areas in and near NY City and who are used to living with public water supply and wastewater systems. Cooperative Extension got a phone call from one of these folks saying that their water was not working. When told that it might be a problem with the water level going down in their private well, the caller asked ‘So who do I call to fill it up?’
After you have your chuckle at this person’s expense, let’s ponder what social research tells us about the effect that geography has on environmental literacy and attitudes. It won’t surprise you to learn that city mice are less knowledgeable about nature than country mice, but it might shock you how much:
There’s two other things you need to know about city people. First, most of us fit that definition more or less. According the U.S. Census Bureau, only 20% of us live in rural areas. Second, city people are noticiably more supportive of nature protection and pollution control organizations, initiatives, investments, laws, regulations, policies, and so on, than rural people.
What What What? Lower knowledge but more supportive attitudes? That seems counterintuitive, but it’s true. My hunch is that people with lower knowledge feel less empowered themselves, and thus a heightened sense of urgency that “somebody does something.”
Hat tip to Simon for the story and to Water Wired for making me …um … aware of National Groundwater Awareness week.
