About the Talk:

Climate change is often portrayed as a universal threat (a “great equalizer”), yet it disproportionately impacts socially and economically disadvantaged communities across the globe. In this talk, Professor Jonathon Schuldt traces the implications of this reality in a decade of original national-level public opinion surveys. He discusses how the U.S. public systematically underestimates the climate and environmental concerns of vulnerable groups, how different groups might conceptualize environmental issues in fundamentally different ways, and how most Americans report believing that climate change affects all groups about equally – despite evidence to the contrary. The talk further considers boundary conditions for these findings, as well as implications for public policy and the political divide on climate change.