Cheap and Clean ― How Americans Think About Energy in the Age of Global Warming

How do Americans think about energy? Is the debate over fossil fuels highly partisanand ideological? Does public opinion about fossil fuels and alternative energies divide along thefault between red states and blue states? And how much do concerns about climate change weigh ontheir opinions? In Cheap and Clean, Stephen Ansolabehere and David Konisky show that Americans aremore pragmatic than ideological in their opinions about energy alternatives, more unified thandivided about their main concerns, and more local than global in their approach to energy. Drawingon extensive surveys they designed and conducted over the course of a decade (in conjunction withMIT's Energy Initiative), Ansolabehere and Konisky report that beliefs about the costs andenvironmental harms associated with particular fuels drive public opinions about energy. Peopleapproach energy choices as consumers, and what is most important to them is simply that energy becheap and clean. Most of us want energy at low economic cost and with little social cost (that is,minimal health risk from pollution). The authors also find that although environmental concernsweigh heavily in people's energy preferences, these concerns are local and not global. Worries aboutglobal warming are less pressing to most than worries about their own city's smog and toxic waste.With this in mind, Ansolabehere and Konisky argue for policies that target both local pollutants andcarbon emissions (the main source of global warming). The local and immediate nature of people'senergy concerns can be the starting point for a new approach to energy and climate change policy.

Stephen Ansolabehere is Professor of Government at Harvard University and coauthor of The End of Inequality and other books. David M. Konisky is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and the coauthor of Superfund's Future: What Will It Cost?