People prefer ‘natural’ strategies to reduce atmospheric carbon | Cornell Chronicle
Soil carbon storage, carbon capture and storage, biochar – mention these terms to most people, and a blank stare might be the response.
But frame these climate change mitigation strategies as being clean and green approaches to reversing the dangerous warming of our planet, and people might be more inclined to at least listen – and even to back these efforts.
A cross-disciplinary collaboration led by Jonathon Schuldt ’04, associate professor of communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, found that a majority of the U.S. public is supportive of soil carbon storage as a climate change mitigation strategy, particularly when that and similar approaches are seen as “natural” strategies.
“To me, that psychology part – that’s really interesting,” Schuldt said. “What would lead people, especially if they’re unfamiliar with these different strategies, to support one more than the other? Our study and others suggest that a big part of it is whether people see it as natural.”
The group’s paper, “Perceptions of Naturalness Predict U.S. Public Support for Soil Carbon Storage as a Climate Solution,” published May 26 in the journal Climatic Change. Co-authors include Johannes Lehmann, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS), Soil and Crop Sciences Section (CALS); Dominic Woolf, senior research associate in SIPS; Shannan Sweet, postdoctoral associate in the Lehmann Lab; and Deborah Bossio of the Nature Conservancy.
