Surveys show Americans believe about 40% of the public backs clean energy policies. A study says the actual figure is 'a supermajority' of 66% to 80%.
Elke Weber became a research psychologist with cross-training in business so that she could investigate how individuals approach financial risks. But a chance opportunity at her first faculty job, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the late 1980s, threw her together with agricultural economists trying to understand if or how local farmers thought about climate change.Some farmers said they preferred a government policy to deal with change.
Not only is it difficult for people to gauge what effective efforts they might make, but we practically have a gene for misconstruing what other people think. At the national scale, these illusions can obstruct policy development.
Between 80% and 90% of Americans underestimate general support for climate policies, such as a carbon tax, mandating 100% clean electricity, building renewables on public lands or a Green New Deal. No state population was wrong by less than 20% in their judgments about what other people think. "When you go to a dinner party, you don't bring that up, especially if you don't know people very well," Weber says."At work you don't want to bring that up because people might stereotype you in a certain way. So you never hear what others are actually talking about."
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