How To Sell A Climate Change Bill to Americans

from Buffalo State University library

GOP pollster Frank Luntz used to be famous for advising Bush in 2002 to focus on the “lack of scientific certainty” in the debate about global warming. Fast forward eight years and now he’s jumped the fence, well, sort of. He’s teaming up with Fred Krupp of all people, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, to help the group figure out how to talk to the American people about global warming in a way that makes them care about it.

The EDF wants Congress to pass a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and believes Americans really do want to see one pass. Two new polls prove it, one by the Benenson Strategy Group, which shows that 58 percent of Americans favor a cap on emissions. The other is by Luntz, and also shows Americans support climate regulation, but only when it’s “couched in terms of national security and jobs, as well as cleaner air,” reporters for the American Public Media show Marketplace told us on Friday.

Luntz’s report, “The Language of a Clean Energy Economy” says generally Americans do believe the environment is worsening—that the quality of our air, water and general environment is deteriorated over the last decade. Ditto for the quality of the world’s environment.

Turns out Americans want action on climate change but not for the reasons they have heard over the years—that it’s important because pollutants in the air are bad for us, because a warming planet will cause rising seas, drought, hurricanes, vanishing species, etc.  We believe it’s real but we’re only going to do something about it if you use words like “green jobs” or, better yet, “American jobs.” If you get rid of “sustainability” and instead say “cleaner, safer, healthier.”

When asked whether or not they want companies to focus on “greater energy efficiency” vs. “being carbon neutral” 47 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to hear about energy efficiency. Only 12 percent cared about businesses becoming carbon neutral. Lutz’s message to government and business: ‘“Carbon Neutral” Should be Eliminated from your Vocabulary’ is also the heading on that graph from the report.

“Carbon neutral” conjures up “Hollywood types flying across the country and buying carbon offsets.” “Accountability for polluters,” on the other hand, conjures up good governance, says a story last week in The New Republic. The story goes on to say that Luntz:

insists that Americans would support a cap on carbon emissions—80 percent of Dems, but also 43 percent of Republicans he surveyed are either definitely or pretty sure climate change is a problem that’s caused in part by humans. But he doesn’t believe cap-and-trade can pass as long as “it’s called ‘cap-and-trade,’ and all the messaging that’s been used against it. The title has become so demonized that they’ve got to come up with a new name.”

And regardless of how Americans feel about global warming—whether they think it’s causes by people, god or a natural phenomena, even whether or not they think it’s real—it seems Luntz has found that the only way to get them to respond to legislation that will address the problem is to cite that old standby: national security. A jittery nation we are, clearly, as national security “tops every other reason to support cap and trade”—according to Luntz’s report. It’s not about saving the world anymore. It’s about “freeing the U.S. from foreign oil—and opening the door to greater security and prosperity.” Turns out “Ending Our Dependence on Foreign Oil is the Top Environmental Goal –For Everyone”—that’s the upper case take-away message on slide number 17. Maybe for everyone but climate scientists—and Democrats. As the subtitle on that slide says: “Just barely for Dems, but it still wins.”