Suddenly, more people in Arkansas believe climate change poses a serious and imminent threat than those who do not.
The most recent Arkansas Poll found a very big jump from earlier years on that issue. Consider, though, another part of the poll. The same issue did not stand out. It was not even mentioned.
First, the jump; As recently as 2016, only 25 percent of those polled believed climate change "will pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime." A 5 percent jump to 30 percent was a notable change in the 2017 poll. This year, the number bounded from 30 percent to 46 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Arkansans who do not believe climate change is a serious threat fell from 61 percent to 44 percent.
Rightly, that got a lot of attention when the latest poll was released. But I've covered politics full-time for 20 years. One lesson that repeats itself constantly: Realizing there is a problem is not what matters. What matters is whether people are willing to sacrifice something to help fix it. What matters is the will to act.
Climate change is nowhere in the same poll's findings of what people believe to be "the most important issue facing people in Arkansas today." Immediate pocketbook issues such as health care, drugs, education and the economy lead the list.
Still, the trend is in. Getting attention is the first step in summoning the will to act, and with a jump like that there is only one way this trend will go. My read: Ambitious people jumping on this bandwagon will benefit some, but people standing in its way -- climate change deniers and such -- will suffer a lot more, proportionately speaking.
The Arkansas Poll, by the way, is done every year by the University of Arkansas. It never fails to ask good questions, ones too few others in the state ask. Climate change is a good example.
So what caused the shift in perception on climate? Hurricanes? Wildfires in California, which started a long time ago before the latest horrible events? Perhaps. I contend a bigger factor could be something much closer to home.
I was easing down the highway in October on my way to be a moderator in a debate. The candidates for 3rd District congressman were having that exchange. I decided to call a longtime friend of mine from south Arkansas, now living in Little Rock. I asked him what question he would like to ask a congressman if he got the chance. To my complete surprise, he said " something about climate change." Where did that come from, I asked.
My friend has gone hunting in piney woods since he was a little boy. When he was young, it was so cold in the morning they had to light fires to warm up. "Now we're going in shorts," he said.
I was so struck by that story I repeated it for the crew in the dressing room at the debate while we were waiting on the candidates to show. I got to the part about having to light fires. I did not have to go any further. A lady who was listening and whom I had never met before that day said, "Now people go in shorts."
Perhaps Arkansans believe in climate change now simply because it is here. One or two warm fall mornings in the woods can be dismissed as a fluke. Three or four are a pattern. Perhaps when people spend enough time in the woods, such a pattern becomes undeniable.
I have friends who have worried about climate change for years. I should not have given them free public relations advice but I did. Stop showing people pictures of polar bears floating on little cakes of ice, I advised. Tell people how the bug population in Arkansas will explode when we do not get hard freezes in the winter anymore.
Biology was never my favorite subject, but long ago I covered row crop agriculture. Of course, a big topic of that was insects, the damage some of them can do and what can be done to control the problem. I am quite confident the bugs will do a much better job of changing with the times and the climate than we will.
Commentary on 11/24/2018