Americans love nature but don’t feel empowered to protect it, new research shows

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Jessica Eise, Indiana University

(THE CONVERSATION) Climate change has been in the news for more than 40 years. It’s typically covered as a scientific or political issue. However, social scientists like me have found that feelings and values are what drive people toward broad, collective change – not charts, graphs or images.

Surveys confirm that the majority of Americans now believe that climate change is real. But many adults seem to feel too exhausted, defeated or powerless to do anything about it.

I am leading a large multiyear research project funded by the National Science Foundation that examines how to tap into morals, ethics and spirituality to create enduring behavioral shifts on this issue. In the pilot study for this project, which has not been published yet, we recently surveyed 275 U.S. adults to understand their relationship with and feelings toward the natural world.

This is a first step toward understanding how to start communicating differently about...