The impact of the fall 1997 debate about global warming on American public opinion

Abstract

Although global warming has been the subject of some public discussion since the turn of the 20thCentury, it was pushed into the national spotlight during the fall of 1997, when President Bill Clinton's administration instigated a campaign to build public support for the Kyoto treaty. To examine the effect of this campaign and the debate it sparked, we conducted two national surveys, one immediately before and the other immediately after the campaign. We addressed three questions: (1) What were Americans' beliefs and attitudes about global warming before the debate? (2) Did the debate catch the public's attention? and (3) Did the debate change people's beliefs and attitudes about global warming? We found that a majority of the American general public and of the global warming “issue public” endorsed the views advocated by President Clinton before the media campaign began. The debate did attract people's attention and strengthened the public's beliefs and attitudes. The debate produced almost no changes in public opinion when the nation's population is lumped together. But beneath this apparently calm surface, strong Democrats came to endorse the positions advocated by the Clinton administration, while strong Republicans were less inclined to endorse the administration's views.