Our series of climate change assessments, using the results of the Yale Climate Opinions Survey through the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, is back!
A few weeks ago we looked at the survey findings on respondents’ beliefs and attitudes about whether climate change was “real” and occurring. The Yale survey has also asked questions regarding “risk perception”. That’s to say: what do people think about how global warming will affect them? Will climate change harm their community, the environment, their grandchildren?
Zooming in on Georgia above, state residents in general seem to perceive high levels of perceived risk from global warming. However, they seem divided as to whether they’re experiencing the effects of global warming right now. This is interesting due to the implication that this may imply a perception that global warming is only a future problem, when that certainly isn’t true.
And it must be noted that Georgia typically lags about 5-6% behind the national percentages shown above in the second chart of this post.
But it’s also worth considering that when asked whether global warming will harm the survey responder personally (see figures 1 and 2 above), Georgians come in almost exactly at the national average, and are in fact 1% above it (i.e. Georgians more likely than the national average to perceive harm from climate change).
On the question of whether the survey responder has already experienced the effects of global warming (see above chart), Georgians also come in higher than the national data ( shown above). Nationwide, we see that 44% report harm already, while in Georgia 47% of responders say that they have already been affected by climate change.
Overall–to “boil down” our previous post about climate change and then this one: (a) it seems Georgia’s beliefs and perceptions about global warming line up fairly well with the national average; and (b) Georgians perceive global warming as more of a personal risk and already-present harm to their lives than do residents nationwide.