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Do Americans care about Climate Change?

Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half.

Let’s break that down:

Americans experience a false social reality.

They underestimate climate policy support.

By half.

Here’s what people think about what others think . (The red line is reality.)

Pluralistic ignorance—a shared misperception of how others think or behave—poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change.

These are the findings of a study published in Nature.

Where does this false social reality come from?

Preliminary evidence suggests three sources of these misperceptions:

(i) consistent with a false consensus effect, respondents who support these policies less (conservatives) underestimate support by a greater degree; controlling for one’s own personal politics,

(ii) exposure to more conservative local norms and

(iii) consuming conservative news correspond to greater misperceptions.

Fox News destroys reality.

But reality does not need Fox News.

Cimate collapse is here.

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Cettina Martorana on Politics and Regeneration

This week I interviewed Cettina Martorana, a candidate in Sicily’s regional elections on the subject of regenerative politics.

Can politics be regenerative at all?

Martorana is a professional business woman who finds herself in an election because she was drafted by Caterina Chinnici – the candidate on the left for president of the Sicilian Assembly.

Cettina Martorana asks: “What kind of Sicily do you want?”

Here are five points I got out of our discussion:

  • Nature must be at the heart of all future decisions.
  • The climate crisis is an economic crisis and a social crisis.
  • Regeneration is an alternative to polarization
  • Regenerative politics is beyond left vs. right
  • Regenerative politics is based on problem solving

If our politics don’t engage the youth, what’s the point in politics at all? Martorana’s idea is simple: ask the students what they want and find ways to create opportunities for them. She does this through an old media format – comics!

But her message is serious.

Here is Martorana’s tree of regeneration – a symbol to capture the interconnected nature of all things in the community:

Martorana’s unique campaign is based on a deep understanding and empathy for the plight facing Sicily’s youth. Jobs and employment are scarce, and now with COVID and climate change, things may get much worse. As a problem-solver, she aims to explain why regenerative politics is not just a word, but the way forward.

You can check Martorana’s ideas out at www.cettinamartorana.it – with the help of Google translate!