Is “thinking green” an economic luxury? Intuition implies that it may be, but so far there’s been little empirical evidence on the subject. Two economists recently changed that: using data from Google keyword searches between 2004 and 2010,?Matthew E. Kahn and Matthew J. Kotchen found that “higher unemployment rates within a state decrease internet search activity for global warming, but increase search activity for unemployment. Based on this revealed preference for interest in global warming, therefore, it appears that recessions crowd out concern for the environment…” The authors also used recent survey data to analyze the link between unemployment and climate-change denial, concluding that “an increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in the probability that residents think global warming is happening, and with a reduction in the certainty of those who think it is. Higher unemployment rates are also associated with views that we should do less with respect to policies designed to reduce global warming.” [%comments]
Unemployment Vs. Global Warming
and 
. You can also watch it on 
who cares? One way to combat global warming is to decrease consumption.
One way to decrease consumption: takeaway everyone’s money!
And your point is what? The same search corollary can be said about internet shopping for new shoes and expensive handbags in states with high unemployment. The only thing that the “research” tacitly shows is that individuals, under economic duress, satisfy what they perceive as basic and necessary necessities. Food, housing, health, education, security, the environment.
But to define “thinking green” as a economic luxury only feeds into the perception that it is a luxury. It isn’t. For many of us it is an economic necessity to stretch our dollars as far as we can by reducing, reusing and recycling what we need and not buying what we don’t. Thinking globally is a part of that thinking process.
People spend more time “feeling” what is right instead of “thinking” what is right.
i’m not surprised.. anyone can doubt correlations made using data mining, but they can be surprisingly accurate. For others posting on this blog: why is this such a difficult thing to reason? It’s a classic case of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Who cares about the environment when there may not be food on the table tomorrow…
The problem here is that pundtis are used to framing the discussions around the ‘environment’ vs ‘business’ tradeoff. This is entirely the wrong way to think about Climate Change. That is an epochal trend that will affect Everyone. In any epochal change, there will be winners and losers, hence great opportunities. The questions is, can be think about it in a way to stimulate our Creativity to take advantages of opportunies and help ameliorate the impacts on losers who will be most affected by it.
Does no one in the media simply know psychology? Politicians do!
Just learn Maslow’s Hierarchy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
When a person is stuck at safety needs, they cannot rise to social needs. In the world today, money is safety/survival need. Add to this Republican’s using fear to motivate their base, and add to th base. We see masses of people pushed into fear/survival level. At that level, anything beyond personal selfish survival is disregarded, or seen as hurting survival. Thus we see the unemployed thinking mostly about themselves. And conservatives arguing for protection of self, non-sharing, which resonates at the low levels. The environment is a level of care larger than social. There IS a correlation and causation.
We saw this too with slavery. Taking away slaves meant taking away money. The South was willing to kill their neighbors & brothers rather than lose what the considered survival. Survival brings out animal attitudes of non-sharing.
It is a psychological issue conservative politicians and media are well aware of and use pointedly. Drive people down the hierarchy, they will become selfish, and then can be used to further selfish corporate economic agenda. America consistently held on to destruction as a means of personal profit, whether buffalo, fishing, slavery, oil, Muslims (oil). Until folks are brought out of fear, level 1, they will predictably not be to consider love of society or planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
We are in a dangerous and divisive time because the only group that understands this psychology of survival is using it to manipulate people for their own agenda. You can’t talk about high ideals of loving your neighbor to a person stuck in survival or fear.
This falls under the “And?…” category. Yes, searches related to employment go up and focus on less immediately tangible issues go down. Wow. Some article.
When every “green” product or service costs anywhere from 20 to 50% more than a comparable non-green (ungreen?) product or service and when every large scale green project (windmills farms, etc.) require large subsidies to exist, they can only be described as indulgences or luxuries.
The whole green movement serves to enable some people to feel morally superior to the rabble.
I am all for getting a better handle on what we are doing to the environment, and managing our impacts in a more intelligent and considered way.
But there is a infinitesimal chance that Shanghai will be underwater anytime soon. It simply is not likely under any plausible assumptions. Moreover the problem i really rather cheap and easy to solve even if it did occur (most likely several hundred years from now due to thermal expansion of the ocean, not melting).
It is exactly this kind of scare mongering that allows the opponents of climate change to gain traction.
Why not stick to the rather powerful and specific facts instead of dreaming up disaster movie scenarios?
(as an aside)
In the long run (next few centuries) we are going to decide to warm he planet anyway to better terraform it and make use of all the ice locked land. A warmer wetter earth is an earth with a higher carrying capacity, and teraforming other terrestrial bodies will be heinously expensive. But you cannot expect people to make decisions based on whats good for civilization long term when they cannot even make decisions based on whats good for 10 years from now. I don’t think Washington has made a decision with more than a 6 month payoff horizon in two decades, maybe more.