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Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian and makes no secret of that. In this interview, she describes how both her scientific expertise and her faith inform her efforts to explain climate change to the general public and especially to climate skeptics. She emphasizes the importance of responding to common questions and explicitly addressing misconceptions, and of starting climate conversations with a discussion of shared values—which, for Christians, means talking about the commandment to love one’s neighbors. Hayhoe talks about what it’s like to be a climate scientist whose work is under attack, and how her negative experiences with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich are symptomatic of a culture in which opinions and gut feelings often take precedence over facts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Understanding public distrust of science is both theoretically and practically important. While previous research has focused on the association between political ideology and trust in science, it is at best an inconsistent predictor. This study demonstrates that two dimensions of political ideology—attitudes towards governments and corporations—can more precisely predict trust in science across issues. Using a survey in the United States and Germany on the science of climate change and genetically modified foods, we find that an individual’s trust in science varies across issues and that attitudes towards government and corporations are important predictors of this trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans polarized on climate change despite decreasing uncertainty in climate science. Explanations focused on organized climate skeptics and ideologically driven motivated reasoning are likely insufficient. Instead, Americans may have formed their attitudes by using party elite cues. We analyze the content of over 8,000 print, broadcast, and cable news stories. We find that coverage became increasingly partisan as climate change rose in salience, but climate skeptics received scant attention. Democratic messages were more voluminous and consistently pro–climate science, while Republican messages have been scarcer and ambiguous until recently. This suggests Republican voters took cues from Democratic elites to reject climate science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disputes about the climate change are about the future. This paper distinguishes between different discourses on climate change taht correspond to different ways of imagining the future. These differences correspond to alternative ways of conceiving the formal and practicalcognitive dimensions of future horizons. Given the relevance of social struggels over climate change and the confrontation of different imaginary futures, it concludes that, away from the diagnosis of the presentification, we find ourselves in a situation where a contested futurization dominates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a decade of steady growth in the acceptance of the existence of climate change and its anthropogenic causes, opinions have polarized, with almost one third of Americans, mostly Republicans, denying that the climate is changing or that human activity is responsible. What causes Americans to change their minds on this issue? Using a large panel data set, we examined the impacts of direct experience with weather anomalies, ideology, relative prioritization of environmental conservation in comparison to economic development, and motivated reasoning that adjusts individual opinion to align with others who share one's party identification. A generalized ordered logit model confirmed the importance of political ideology, party identification, and relative concern about environmental conservation and economic development on attitude change. The effect of party identification strengthened with attentiveness to news and public affairs, consistent with the logic of motivated reasoning. Recent experience with hot summers, warm winters, droughts, and natural disasters had only a minimal impact on attitude change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To analyze the factors affecting US public concern about the threat of climate change between January 2002 and December 2013, data from 74 separate surveys are used to construct quarterly measures of public concern over global climate change. Five factors should account for changes in levels of concern: extreme weather events, public access to accurate scientific information, media coverage, elite cues, and movement/countermovement advocacy. Structural equation modeling indicates that elite cues, movement advocacy efforts, weather, and structural economic factors influence the level of public concern about climate change. While media coverage exerts an important influence, it is itself largely a function of elite cues and economic factors. Promulgation to the public of scientific information on climate change has no effect. Information-based science advocacy has had only a minor effect on public concern, while political mobilization by elites and advocacy groups is critical in influencing climate change concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically examined citizen views on climate change in China and the United States, including an analysis of factors affecting public support for joining an international climate change treaty. We conducted face-toface intercept surveys of Chinese adults (N=2,047) and online surveys of American adults (N=1,306) between September and November 2013. Overall, Chinese adults were more likely to accept the realities of anthropogenic climate change. Although a supermajority of respondents in both countries support an international climate treaty, support for such action was significantly greater among Chinese respondents compared to Americans. Additionally, a variety of variables reflecting climate change views, including awareness and understanding, were positively correlated with support for a climate treaty in both countries. All else being equal, we also found that more exposure to media content on climate change increased support for a treaty. Lastly, political affiliation was found to have an important influence on support for an international climate treaty in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's perceptions can reflect local issues and concerns to reveal actual impacts of climate change/variability (CCV) on their lives and livelihoods. As climate change (CC) adaptation strategies are to be implemented at the local level, involving local people right from the beginning of problem diagnosis ensures their successful implementation. This study has adopted a perception-based approach to assess CCV, its effects in terms of extreme events and prioritize adaptation strategies to enhance resilience of the communities, in the Budhi Gandaki River Basin (BGRB), Nepal. It is likely that valuing local knowledge and experiences makes people more responsive to the intervention and backing up the perception results by scientific data analysis establishes a sense of legitimacy to what people have perceived. Results showed that people have perceived CCV in various forms such as increase in temperature, decrease in pre-monsoon and monsoon rainfall, and more erratic rainfall timing in recent years. These perceived impacts are consistent with trends in observed rainfall and temperature data in the study area. The CCV has led to increase in frequency of extreme events - both floods and droughts, and associated impacts. As an adaptation strategy, people prioritized 'technological measures' as the most effective for both flood and drought. The analysis provided herein confirms that combining scientific facts with people's perception helps establish more reliant knowledgebase of CC to better plan and develop climate-resilient communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a practical application in the municipality of Rivière-au-Tonnerre on the Northern coast of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, this article explores the advantages of using a vision of future desired conditions for planning adaptation to climate change. Such an approach was used in small “kitchen meetings” for the elaboration of an adaptation action plan that was approved by the municipal council in September 2013 and revised in November 2014. The impacts of climate hazards were discussed as obstacles to the desired future conditions expressed by participants. This approach allowed the planning of a number of adaptation options, to define roles and responsibilities of different actors involved and to articulate different plans that are either in existence or being developed, linking them with adaptation. Based on our observations and on other studies in the fields of social movements, psychology and risk perception, we suggest that the use of a vision in discussion meetings with local actors could increase their motivation by placing the avoidance of undesired situations in the context of reaching their aspirations, in other words by embedding a prevention problem in promotion logic. The expression of a vision of a desired future could allow them to express their values and could facilitate the “framing” of a plan in a way that is coherent with them. The visions could then also be used to frame awareness-raising activities along the values they express. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This experimental study investigates how imagery and text in news coverage of climate change affect perceptions of issue importance, efficacy, and intentions to conserve energy and engage in climate change-related political behavior. The results reveal that images of solar panels and texts that discuss actions to address climate change increase individuals’ perceptions of efficacy. Perceived efficacy and issue importance each have a positive association with behavior change. In contrast to previous studies, the present investigation finds no evidence that exposure to images of either climate impacts or climate pollution negatively influence perceived efficacy or positively influence perceived issue importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Church teachings on climate change and most Catholics accepting the science and being concerned, a large minority of Catholic laity and clergy deny it. This multisited, qualitative study, which includes supporting quantitative data, focuses on how skepticism is articulated by Catholic climate change skeptics, and transmitted and transmuted through Catholic networks. While Catholic climate change skeptics echo other skeptics, they also bring Catholic perspectives, often mingled with conservative religious and political views. Some express concern common among other Christian skeptics that believing in climate change leads to neopaganism and promotes antihuman sentiments. The focus is on Catholic climate change skeptics and their ideas, not Catholicism perse, and various cultural, social, and psychological factors, including their understanding of Catholicism, that impact their climate change skepticism. This contributes to the growing scholarship on climate change skepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historic Wilderness Act celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014, and wilderness social science shared a similar legacy. As paradoxical as it might seem, humans are an important part of wilderness, helping to define the very concept and representing an important component of wilderness use and management. Much of the past five decades of wilderness-related social science has focused on recreational use, documenting the impacts of recreation on wilderness resources and the quality of the wilderness experience, exploring application of the concept of recreational carrying capacity to wilderness, and developing planning and management frameworks for balancing the inherent tension between wilderness use and protecting the quality of wilderness resources and the experience of visiting wilderness. The Limits of Acceptable Change and related planning frameworks, including formulation of recreation-related indicators and standards, continues to help guide wilderness management today. Other programs of social science research have developed protocols for measuring and monitoring wilderness recreation, defined the root causes of conflict among wilderness users and identified management approaches to minimize this conflict, explored the appropriate and acceptable use of fees for wilderness use, and identified a growing suite of wilderness values. All of these programs of research and others that could not be included in this review article have helped guide wilderness management and policy. However, social science research has evolved as a function of changes in both wilderness and society. This evolution continues through a focus on public attitudes toward adaptation to climate change, public attitudes toward restoration in wilderness to correct past human intervention, appropriate use of technology in wilderness, and issues related to the relevance of wilderness in light of changes in society and use of public lands. This article tells the story of these changes in issues and the relationship between wilderness and the American people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia, a country which has regularly experienced various natural disasters, is now set to face more intense and frequent disasters in the twenty-first century as a result of climate change. Prior research indicates that in Australia, the perceived risks of climate change are mixed and becoming less prevalent across rural and urban locations, posing a threat to the public's adoption of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Research was conducted in four disaster-impacted rural Australian towns to investigate whether prior disaster experience, trust in climate change risk communications and specific location predicted climate change risk perceptions. Four case study sites were chosen exemplifying communities impacted by different types of disaster events. The case study towns were Beechworth (wildfire, 2009) and Bendigo (drought, 2002-2008) in Victoria; Ingham (flood, 2009) and Innisfail (cyclone, 2006) in Queensland. Structural equation modelling analyses of surveys returned by a sample of 1,008 householders across the four towns showed that prior disaster experience had no impact upon climate change risk perceptions. Instead climate change risk perceptions were predicted by trust in climate change communications, climate change knowledge and the geographical location of the sample, suggesting the need for targeted, place-specific contextual communication interventions that consider the needs and socioeconomic characteristics of the community in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social divides on climate change are often attributed to political factors, but new psychological research points to a wide range of group influences beyond politics that shape public opinion on climate change. We highlight two commonly overlooked sources of influence that represent key underutilized leverage points for public outreach: (1) the roles of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities and (2) the power of social perceptions (i.e., meta-beliefs) in mobilizing public action. This research points to an urgent need to broaden how scientists, policymakers, and the media think about public engagement and consensus building in the domain of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent of the consensus among scientists on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has the potential to influence public opinion and the attitude of political leaders and thus matters greatly to society. The history of science demonstrates that if we wish to judge the level of a scientific consensus and whether the consensus position is likely to be correct, the only reliable source is the peer-reviewed literature. During 2013 and 2014, only 4 of 69,406 authors of peer-reviewed articles on global warming, 0.0058% or 1 in 17,352, rejected AGW. Thus, the consensus on AGW among publishing scientists is above 99.99%, verging on unanimity. The U.S. House of Representatives holds 40 times as many global warming rejecters as are found among the authors of scientific articles. The peer-reviewed literature contains no convincing evidence against AGW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research indicates that socio-demographic attributes are important predictors of environmental concern. However, this research mainly focused on Western societies, with minimal representation of non-Western contexts. In this article, we argue that a stronger representation of non-Western societies is necessary for a more global understanding of pro-environmentalism. On this basis, we explored socio-demographic differences in environmental concern and willingness to pay for addressing climate change in Pakistan. We aimed to assess demographic trends in public perceptions of environmental problems in the Pakistan, and their level of convergence with Western-derived theories of the social bases of environmental concern. Although our findings are largely congruent with trends previously observed in Western contexts, we found some divergent demographic patterns in environmental concern among Pakistanis that are likely the result of a number of contextual influences that prevail in Pakistan and other similar developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is one of the most significant science issues facing humanity; yet, teaching students about climate change is challenging: not only is it multidisciplinary, but also it is contentious and debated in political, social and media forums. Students need to be equipped with an understanding of climate change science to be able to participate in this discourse. The purpose of this study was to examine Western Australian high school students’ understanding of climate change and the greenhouse effect, in order to identify their alternative conceptions about climate change science and provide a baseline for more effective teaching. A questionnaire designed to elicit students’ understanding and alternative conceptions was completed by 438 Year 10 students (14–15 years old). A further 20 students were interviewed. Results showed that students know different features of both climate change and the greenhouse effect, however not necessarily all of them and the relationships between. Five categories of alternative conceptions were identified. The categories were (1) the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer; (2) types of greenhouse gases; (3) types of radiation; (4) weather and climate and (5) air pollution. These findings provide science educators a basis upon which to develop strategies and curriculum resources to improve their students’ understanding and decision-making skills about the socioscientific issue, climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rhetoric can facilitate movement beyond impasse on whether and how to confront climate change, enabling more effective public reasoning. Our evidence comes from a small deliberative group that contained climate-change deniers. We show how, in this setting, bridging rhetoric (capable of reaching those who do not share the speaker’s perspective) managed to bring deniers and others into accepting that particular greenhouse-gas mitigation measures were in the range of acceptable policy choices – even as deniers continued to dispute the existence of anthropogenic climate change. What we observed drives home the need for rhetorical bridges in broader public debates on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public flood protection cannot eliminate totally the risk of flooding. Hence, private mitigation measures which proactively protect homes from being flooded or reduce flood damage are an essential part of modern flood risk management. This study analyses private flood mitigation measures among German households. The final data set covers more than 4200 households from all parts of the country, including flood plains as well as areas which are typically not at a high risk of riverine flooding. The results suggest that the propensity to mitigate flood damage increases i.a. with past damage experience and damage expectations for the future. The latter effect can be interpreted as a ‘climate adaptation signal’ in the flood mitigation behaviour. All other factors remaining equal, a strong belief in a climate-change-induced increase of personal flood damage in the next decades correlates with an increase of the probability of flood mitigation by more than 10 percentage points. Moreover, empirical evidence for moral hazard in the flood mitigation behaviour cannot be observed. Households expecting insurance coverage do not reduce their mitigation efforts. Likewise, the expectation of government relief payments hinders mitigation only for some groups of households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The images used by the media to represent science can help people’s understanding of complex processes and create meaningful links with audiences. This is particularly relevant in the case of climate change (CC), an important phenomenon that, nevertheless, is often perceived as a remote issue, with no relevance to daily life. This article presents the main results of a research on the images used in television news to represent CC. From a sample of 1476.4 hours of Spanish television news programmes, a content analysis of 78 stories on climate change was carried out. This was complemented with six semi-structured interviews at five TV newsrooms. Results indicate that the low rate of coverage of CC can be related to the scarcity of attractive images available to the channels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study empirically investigates the relationship between an individual's concern about climate change and one's actions reducing the effects of climate change and intentions to pay for mitigating such effects. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of economic factors that may serve as a contextual factor influencing these relationships. Based on data from the Life in Transition Survey covering individuals from 35 countries in 2010, this study uses information regarding the financial crisis of 2008 to inform about economic factors. The results suggest that respondents exhibiting higher climate change concerns are not only more likely to intend to pay for mitigating the effects of climate change, but they are also more likely to take actions in order to minimize such effects. The results also indicate that economic factors only have a moderating effect on the relationship between higher climate change concerns and actions. Furthermore, the results also point to the relevance of a country's state of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, Adam J. Berinsky and Donald R. Kinder published findings in the Journal of Politics that demonstrated that framing news as a story influences how individuals cognitively organize concepts and information. The study presented here moves forward in this tradition. This research combines samples obtained in the springs of 2009 and 2010 while conducting online experiments. In these experiments, slightly over 2,000 respondents are asked to organize concepts presented in one of three culturally nuanced stories about climate change or where information is presented as a list. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicates that when respondents are exposed to culturally congruent stories, respondent organizational patterns are more likely to mirror the story. We discuss the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a dominant new theme in development politics, to an extent that it can almost be considered as a new development paradigm. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in three East African countries presented in this article indicates. The article argues that the current transformation of environmental governance reflects not only climate change as such, but also - and perhaps even more so - the discourse of a changing climate and its effect on development politics. The empirical evidence shows that African farmers, politicians and government officials often respond to the new 'adaptation paradigm' more readily than to directly felt phenomena caused by a changing climate. We therefore argue that the ontology of the concept of adaptation to climate change needs to be readjusted. Epistemologically, our concern is to trace the discourse of adaptation to climate change across multiple sites, i.e. how it 'travels' between global epistemic communities and adaptation projects in developing countries. Drawing on actor-network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by highlighting the contested and multi-sited narratives and practices that bring adaptation into being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a risk conflicts perspective, this article challenges two common assumptions of existing research on climate change in public and media discourses. It argues that the evaluation of these discourses on the extent to which these either accurately reflect a scientific consensus or contribute to achieving social consensus insufficiently takes account of the exclusionary mechanisms it starts from. A conceptual and empirical framework is subsequently put forward which allows one to evaluate mediated discourses in terms of the extent to which democratic debate and citizenship are encouraged. Such analysis can reveal the discursive strategies underlying processes of politicization and depoliticization. This perspective is illustrated by an analysis of a local case study: the “Sing for the Climate” campaign. We conclude by calling for a broad systematic research agenda revealing the extent to which de/politicizing discourses are found to influence public and media discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has emerged as one of the most important issues of the twenty-first century. Recent opinion polls show rising public awareness of climate change. Yet considerable cross-national variation exists in the intensity of public concern and in public willingness to pay for addressing climate change. Drawing on twelve multinational surveys, we examine two aggregate conditions--a country's affluence and its vulnerability to climate risks--as key factors underlying cross-national differences in public support for and commitment to costly climate policies. In contrast to the post-materialism thesis, we find "strong" concern about climate change to be higher in developing countries. Contrary to expectation, climate vulnerability had little effect on public concern, but did have significant impact on some measures of personal commitment and support for climate policies. The analysis indicates that, in most countries examined, high concern about climate change is only beginning to translate into personal commitment to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective and just decisionmaking on geoengineering will require greater appreciation of the diverse ways in which people conceive of and relate to the idea of climate control. This study targets the UK national press as a domain in which to begin intercepting discourses of geoengineering forming within the UK. Frame analysis is conducted and the issue frames of Innovation, Risk, Governance and Accountability, Economics, Morality, Security and Justice are identified within the corpus of articles surveyed. These frames amplify different priorities and values, engaging a rich and diverse portfolio of attitudes to climate risks. Rather than being, as we envisaged, 'issue specific', the frames that emerged from our analysis are actually categorised most effectively according to 'generic' frames that could apply to a range of other issues. Underlying assumptions about the nature-human relationship are found to be an interesting influence on frame construction. Further research is needed to explore this relationship in wider cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using survey data, the authors developed an architecture of climate change beliefs in Norway and their correlation with support for policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A strong majority of respondents believe that anthropogenic climate change is occurring and identify carbon dioxide emissions as a cause. Regression analysis shows that respondents recognize the effectiveness of direct actions that require difficult trade-offs, such as imposing a carbon tax. Yet, their voting intentions suggest a preference for policies that have at best an indirect effect on reducing climate change. Most respondents favor policy options that are generally good for the environment and cause no personal hardship. The disconnection between perceptions about the effectiveness of direct actions and support for less effective mitigation approaches may reflect the respondents’ collective distancing from the problem of climate change. This could be an important consideration in the design of communication strategies that promote emission abatement policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change, and what is to be done about it, is a matter of enormous importance and urgency, on which every educated citizen in a democracy ought to try to make up her mind. It is strongly urged that holders of opposed views on the matter should not be too ready to dismiss one another as knaves or fools. It is concluded, with some regret, that alarmists, who hold that we are headed for catastrophe unless we take drastic steps, have made a better case than have their opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bangladesh is considered worldwide as one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change. This is due to its unique geographic location, dominance of floodplains, and low elevation of land from the sea, high density of population, high levels of poverty, and overwhelming dependence on nature, its resources and services. The coastal areas, especially offshore islands are most vulnerable considering the impacts of climate change and variability. Adaptation and mitigation strategies and action measures are to be taken at government and policy level of Bangladesh to combat future threats of climate change. Before taking these types of initiatives, it is needed to know the knowledge and concepts, capacity and strength, and awareness level of the coastal community. The objectives of this study are to assess the people's perceptions and understanding on climate change among adult and juvenile age groups of the community people; and to evaluate the awareness level of them on the impacts of climate change in the study area. Study area has been selected from the eastern coast of Bangladesh. The methods followed for the research were literature review, key informant interviews with representatives from local government and stakeholders, questionnaire survey with local adult and juvenile people. The study revealed that a significant portion of the society was not aware enough regarding the impacts of climate change and variability; and has hazy knowledge about the climate change and sea level rise of their adjacent coast. But, they have been observing the extreme events of weather like cyclones and storm surges, coastal erosion, and the changes of sea surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlier voices—particularly those views often dubbed climate “skeptics,” “denialists,” or “contrarians”—have gained prominence and traction in mass media over time through a mix of internal workings such as journalistic norms, institutional values and practices, and external political economic, cultural, and social factors. In this context, the article explores how and why these actors—through varied interventions and actions—garner disproportionate visibility in the public arena via mass media. It also examines how media content producers grapple with ways to represent claims makers, as well as their claims, so that they clarify rather than confuse these critical issues. To the extent that mass media misrepresent and/or gratuitously cover these outlier views, they contribute to ongoing illusory, misleading, and counterproductive debates within the public and policy communities, and poorly serve the collective public. Furthermore, working through mass media outlets, these outlier interventions demonstrate themselves to be (at times deliberately) detrimental to efforts seeking to enlarge rather than constrict the spectrum of possibility for varied forms of climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nationally representative surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010 found significant declines in Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists. Drawing upon the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, this analysis empirically examines the impact of “climategate”—an international scandal resulting from the unauthorized release of emails between climate scientists in England and United States. The results demonstrate that “climategate” had a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists. The loss of trust in scientists, however, was primarily among individuals with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology. Nonetheless, Americans overall continued to trust scientists more than other sources of information about global warming. Several other explanations for the declines in public understanding are also explored, including the poor state of the economy, a new administration and Congress, diminishing media attention, and abnormal winter weather. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conservative “echo chamber” is a crucial element of the climate change denial machine. Although social scientists have begun to examine the role of conservative media in the denial campaign, this article reports the first examination of conservative newspaper columnists. Syndicated columnists are very influential because they reach a large audience. We analyze 203 opinion editorials (“op-eds”) written by 80 different columnists published from 2007 to 2010, a period that saw a number of crucial events and policy proposals regarding climate change. We focus on the key topics the columnists address and the skeptical arguments they employ. The overall results reveal a highly dismissive view of climate change and critical stance toward climate science among these influential conservative pundits. They play a crucial role in amplifying the denial machine’s messages to a broad segment of the American public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on findings from ethnographic analysis of U.S. climate scientists, this article identifies largely unrecognized sociocultural dimensions underpinning differences in scientists’ perceptions of anthropogenic climate change. It argues that culturally laden tensions among scientists have influenced some to engage with the antienvironmental movement and, as such, influence U.S. climate science politics. The tensions are rooted in broad-based and ongoing changes within U.S. science and society since the 1960s and propelled by specific scientific subgroups’ negative experiences of the rise of environmentalism and of climate modeling, in particular.   Attending to these and other experience-based cultural dynamics can help refine cultural theory and enhance understanding of the deeper battles of meaning that propel climate science politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the issue of climate change and its importance to Italian politics. In particular, the authors analyse whether political parties and their leaders give due importance to the issues in their party literature and speeches. In order to investigate this phenomenon, the authors studied manifestos of those political parties represented in Parliament between 2008 and 2013, other official documents available on their websites and official statements of political leaders. The overall picture emerging is a substantial lack of attention paid to climate change, which is also poorly represented in the Italian media. One of the key problems, however, lies in what we define as the 'global' dimension of the climate change debate that makes it look unattractive to local political discourse (where Italian politics is traditionally rooted). We argue this impacts negatively on public opinion and the lack of Italian public policies aimed at ensuring sustainability and promoting good behaviour and environmental best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our 2005 paper, Rethinking Sustainable Cities, we made a case for the increasing significance of climate change in the urban politics of sustainability. Taking a multilevel governance perspective, we argued that the ‘urban’ governance of climate protection was not confined to a local arena or to the actions of the state, but rather was orchestrated through the interrelations between global, national and local actors across state/non-state boundaries. We revisit these arguments and examine their validity in the light of the rapidly changing landscape of urban responses to climate change and the growing academic literature in this field. We consider in turn: the ways in which climate change is shaping urban agendas; the utility of multilevel governance perspectives for understanding this phenomenon; and the extent to which we can identify a ‘new’ politics of urban climate change governance and its consequent implications for the development of theory and practice in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global climate change modelling has identified south-east Australia as a ‘hot spot’ for more frequent climatic extremes. Rural landholders may be vulnerable to the risks climate change presents. Australia''s rural landholders are considered highly adaptable, with a history of responding to climatic uncertainty and variability. Yet it is possible that some of their adaptations will not be effective in reducing vulnerability, and may have downstream impacts. Rural landholder decision making is complex, and this is one of a limited number of papers examining rural landholder responses to climate change and the factors influencing their decisions. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews and a mail survey of rural landholders in two districts. Established socio-psychological scales were employed to measure beliefs, values and attitudes that are expected to shape landholder behaviour. Most of the rural landholders surveyed were not climate change ‘deniers’ with 70% agreeing that the climate is changing and that human activity is a major influence. Climate change was nominated as an influence on six adaptive behaviours by 50% or more of survey respondents. However, there were no significant relationships between belief in climate change and adaptive actions. Personal values and worldviews were found to be the most frequent factors linked to adaptive behaviour. These findings illustrate the complex nature of rural landholder decision making: suggesting that many rural landholders do not need convincing of the existence of climate change; and that efforts to motivate rural landholders to respond to climate change risks should be based on sound knowledge of their values and worldviews. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Whilst environmental issues are now a prominent part of the public policy agenda in Britain, less attention has been paid to the factors shaping contemporary public concern for the environment. The sources of environmentally-related beliefs and behaviours in contemporary British public opinion are assessed, using data from the British Household Panel Survey 2008–9. Exploratory data reduction analysis is undertaken on multiple indicators of environmental concern. Two multi-item scales relating to the perceived impacts of climate change and consumer behaviours are examined. Linear regression analysis shows that sociological and attitudinal factors have similar effects on beliefs and behaviour. The sociological factors showing consistent effects are gender, age, religious salience and education. Attitudinally, there are broadly consistent effects for partisanship and political engagement. The effects of other variables differ across beliefs and behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable cross-national variation in the patterns of adoption and implementation of policies designed to mitigate climate change. The sources of this variation are considered. International relations, economic structures, national cultures and domestic political competition are factors, often in interaction one with another. In situations of multilevel governance, sub-national actors may be significant. Grassroots activism from without the formal political process has sometimes been critical in sharpening the focus of formal political actors, and increasing their willingness to act. Climate change is a global issue, but the political action necessary to address it is inevitably local and national as well as international. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Tharu people of Nepal have a longstanding knowledge of their locality and its patterns of weather and agriculture. The impact of climate change severely affects their livelihoods. The aim of this study is to document the perceptions of the Tharu community of Kanchanpur District in Nepal in regard to climate change and its impacts. We have generated primary data by household survey, focus group discussion, key informant interview, and field observation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]