Environmental vs. disaster fear

People who are politically leaning conservative are systematically less worried about climate change and more likely to be sceptical about the need to take action against climate change. Yet, once they are hit by a natural disaster, they tend to become more concerned about climate change. But does the gap with left-leaning people close? It depends on what you focus on.

Christopher Garneou, Heather Bedle and Rory Stanfield surveyed a representative sample of Americans about their attitudes toward climate change and their fears about environmental and disaster risks. The charts below show that conservative respondents are systematically less worried about climate change, the risks from climate change or the importance of climate change.

Yes, people who are generally more afraid of environmental disasters are more concerned about climate change, but conservatives are always more sanguine about these issues than liberals with the same level of environmental fear.

Climate concern increases as environmental fears increase

Source: Garneou et al. (2024)

So far, so unsurprising.

But what happens when you are asking people not about their general environmental fears but fears about concrete, salient natural disasters like floods, windstorms, etc.? The results change. The second set of charts below shows that the gap between conservatives and liberals narrows and eventually disappears as disaster fears increase.

The gap between conservatives and liberals disappears when asked about disaster fears

Source: Garneou et al. (2024)

Liberals show a rather constant degree of belief in climate change and the risks it creates no matter how afraid they are of natural disasters. Conservatives, however, are much more likely to become concerned about climate change and its risks if they are more afraid of natural disasters. And as you might have guessed, people become more afraid of natural disasters once they have experienced them first hand.

There is this old joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been robbed. We might say that a liberal is a conservative who has experienced a natural disaster.