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Americans see 'carbon pollution' as worse than 'emissions'
A new study found that some terms for carbon dioxide emissions may evoke the climate crisis better than others.
CLIMATEWIRE | Americans consider “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” as more harmful to human health and the environment than “greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a new study that evaluated how people perceive climate change communication.
Researchers surveyed more than 2,800 people on their views of the three terms for a study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Communication. Through open-ended questions, they found that respondents associated carbon emissions with “pollution,” carbon pollution with “harmful” images, and greenhouse gas emissions with “climate change” — and sometimes gardening.
The results mean policymakers, climate activists and green energy businesses may need to reconsider the use of the term “greenhouse gas emissions” when communicating to the public about the dangers of the climate crisis, researchers say. Already, climate activists and organizations are increasingly adopting the term “carbon pollution” to emphasize the harms that arise from a rapidly changing climate.
“We need to know what comes to mind and what people's beliefs are when we use these terms,” said Matthew Goldberg, one of the authors of the study and an associate research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Greenhouse gas emissions do cover other things in a technical sense and would be appropriate usage in the classroom, for example, but if you're trying to link it to specific harms or to pollution, you might be better off with carbon pollution or carbon emissions.”
Researchers randomly assigned each respondent to one of the terms and then asked a series of questions, including,“When you think of [term], what is the first word or phrase that comes to mind?” The survey then asked respondents to assess, on a scale of 1 to 7, whether that word or phrase was negative or positive.
The survey also included questions to gauge whether respondents saw the term as harmful to human health, the environment and air quality. Carbon pollution and carbon emissions were more associated with all those harms than greenhouse gas emissions.
The pattern of responses to the three terms was “nearly identical” for both Democrats and Republicans, according to the study. Independent or unaffiliated voters saw more similarity between the terms than partisans.
Goldberg said that such associations are fluid — and could change if a term became seen as political. He pointed to the Green New Deal, the title of a congressional resolution to address climate change that he said has now become “a toxic topic of political conversation.”
