Introduction

Climate change is a compelling global leadership issue in the 21st century. Recent computer simulations indicate that global sea levels may rise as much as three feet by the end of this century, which would have devastating planetary consequences (Deconto & Pollard, 2016). The solution to this wicked problem is not simply the responsibility of world leaders; followers must also play a part. This is an issue that is the result of contributions from many sources, and as such it is critically important to have buy-in from the general population in order to address the issue effectively. In short, followers must play an integral part in creating and implementing solutions to climate change. Major questions addressed in this chapter are: “Do different cultures hold different understandings of the role of followers in addressing climate change?” and “What are the relevant cultural factors that impact followers’ self-perception of their role in addressing climate change?”

The study of followership has increased dramatically in the past decade (e.g., Kelley, 1988; Kellerman, 2008; Riggio et al., 2008; Chaleff, 2009). In this chapter we will examine the role of followers in addressing environmental issues, in particular climate change. Because there is not one source of the problem, or one area that needs to be protected, it is difficult if not impossible for leaders to implement a solution to the problem from above without considering the followers. In order to obtain buy-in from the followers, it is important to educate them about the issue, show them how it is relevant to their lives, and convince them there is a solution and that they can have a role in addressing the problem.

Redekop (2010) likewise identifies these aspects of follower buy-in, issue relevance, and personal agency as being important specifically to leaders communicating to their followers in the context of environmental issues. Leaders cannot address the problems of climate change and their potential solutions on their own; they need followers to accomplish the monumental problems anthropomorphic climate change presents. These wicked problems require “all hands on deck” – i.e., both leaders and followers – to rally around the common purpose of environmental protection and sustainability. Mary Parker Follett called this sort of commitment to a common purpose the “invisible leader” for leaders and followers. “While leadership depends upon depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others, the ability to make purpose articulate. And then that common purpose becomes the leader” (Follett, 1933/2003, p. 172.). Leadership scholar Ira Chaleff echoes this observation in his study of followership, and identifies leaders and followers rallying around a common purpose as the central component of the leadership process (Chaleff, 2009).

Followers have more of an impact upon achieving a goal than leaders often realize. Kellerman (2008) makes this point in a typology of followership based upon a follower’s engagement in achieving the common purpose. In Kellerman’s typology, followers can be active or passive in pursuing a common goal. Active followers, of course, energetically pursue the common goal. These are the types of followers that environmental leaders need to recruit, develop, and groom for leadership positions of their own if they hope to achieve the common purpose of mitigating global climate change. However, this is not to imply that passive followers have no impact upon the leadership process. By their refusal or inability to act, passive followers tacitly support the status quo – in this case, the ongoing emission of greenhouse gases. Similarly, R. Kelley contends that effective followers are committed to a purpose outside themselves (Kelley, 1988).

In investigating these issues, we conducted surveys over the past four years as a part of a class we have taught on conservation and leadership in Central America. A major aspect of this class is collecting survey data in Costa Rica and Belize based upon a survey that was conducted in the United States in 2007 (Yale Environmental Poll, 2007). In what follows, we first examine three portions of the survey that are directly linked to followership and the role followers play in understanding and addressing the problem of climate change, before putting the findings into cultural, educational, economic, and media context. The relevance of climate change to followers, and the role of followers in addressing climate change, are then discussed, followed by our conclusions.

Survey Themes and Data

The central themes of the research and a summary of the data are as follows:

1 Education: “If I had to, I could explain climate change to someone I meet in passing.”

In the United States, 67 percent agreed with this statement, while approximately 96 percent in Costa Rica and 81 percent in Belize agreed with this statement in our survey. In Costa Rica, global climate change is a topic that is brought up early on in grade school; thus, even though many people do not continue with their education beyond the 8th grade, they have been exposed to the topic. In contrast, in the United States there have been reports of uncertainty among teachers about what to teach as a result of the politicized nature of the topic (Plutzer et al., 2016). When people were asked what sources they trusted for information on environmental issues, it was interesting that the percentage that trusted scientists, business groups, and industry scientists was nearly identical in all three countries. In contrast, the level of trust in television news (United States – 50 percent; Costa Rica – 77 percent; Belize – 56 percent) and newspapers (United States – 45 percent; Costa Rica – 63 percent; Belize – 64 percent) was higher in the Central American countries.

2 Relevance: “I have personally been affected by climate change.”

In Costa Rica and Belize more than 55 percent of the participants indicated that they had been affected by climate change. In conversations with those people being surveyed, they often referred to changes in climate affecting where animals were found or having effects on agriculture.

3 Role in the solution: “It is my responsibility to help reduce the impacts of climate change.”

In the United States, 81 percent of those surveyed agreed with this statement, which is impressive considering the politicized nature of the topic (Yale Environmental Poll, 2007). However, in Costa Rica and Belize the percent agreeing with this statement was even higher; both were at 95 percent. The participants in Central America are looking to their leaders for encouragement and information on how to conserve energy (higher than 95 percent). Finally, in the most recent survey we found that many people are willing to make a personal sacrifice to address environmental problems. In both Costa Rica and Belize more than 80 percent of the respondents indicated that they would be willing to donate one hour of wages a month to protect forest and water resources.

The results that we obtained were not surprising and other studies, such as a survey conducted in 20 countries by Ipsos MORI, have shown that the United States has the lowest percentage of adults that believe climate change is caused by humans (Ipsos, 2014). With that in mind, the obvious next step is to look at these results and try to understand possible explanations for why these three countries are so different. As was stated previously, in order to motivate followers, it is important to educate them about the issue, show them how the issue is relevant to their lives, and help them see how they can have a role in addressing the problem. We are going to start the comparisons of these three countries by examining some of the historical, cultural, and educational factors that have impacted climate change education in each country.

Cultural Context

First, we will consider the cultural makeup of these countries. The United States of America (USA) was initially a British colony, although there were influences from other European countries. The USA became an independent country in 1776, and although there are multiple cultural influences the culture is generally considered to be “linear active.” The terms “linear active” and “multi-active” used here are borrowed from R. D. Lewis (2006) to categorize a culture’s preferences for their use of time, communication patterns, and mannerisms, as well as a culture’s approach to leadership. Lewis synthesizes the work of Hall (1973), Hofstede (2001), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2012), Tönnies (1887/2002), and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961) to identify cultural types, which he then groups into three broad categories: linear active, multi-active, and reactive cultures.

Lewis (2006) uses the term “linear active” to describe mostly English-speaking and Western European cultures and their individualism, use of monochromic time, preference for factual knowledge when making decisions, task orientation, small power distance between leaders and followers, and preference for progressing through decision making in a straightforward linear fashion. The United States is one of Lewis’s prototypes of a linear active culture.

Lewis (2006) uses the term “multi-active” to describe mostly Latin American, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and African cultures. Lewis contends that multi-active cultures show a preference for collectivism, polychronic time, preference for relationships as well as factual knowledge when making decisions, relational orientation, greater power distance between leaders and followers, and preference for taking into account relationships and emotion when making decisions.

This chapter will use the terms “linear active” and “multi-active” as shorthand for these cultural types. Lewis uses the term “reactive” to describe mostly Asian and Southeast Asian cultures and their preferences in these same regards. However, this study does not address these cultures, so we will not develop this line of thinking here.

Belize was also a British colony until it became independent in 1981. However, the people of Belize have a more mixed cultural heritage than the USA, with the majority of people identifying as having mestizo (mixed European-American Indian) ancestry (53 percent), Creole (European-African) (26 percent), indigenous Mayan (11 percent), as well as significant populations of people with African ancestry (CIA, 2017). As such the culture in Belize is more of a mix of linear and multi-active characteristics. Finally, Costa Rica was a Spanish colony until it declared its independence in 1821. The population of Costa Rica mainly identifies as having either Caucasian or mestizo ancestry (83 percent), with smaller proportions of the population identifying as having African or indigenous ancestry than in Belize. Because of Costa Rica’s higher standard of living and job opportunities, there is also a significant immigrant population (9 percent), with most of the foreign-born workers originating from Nicaragua (CIA, 2017). Because of the Spanish influence, Costa Rica tends to have a more multi-active culture. These cultural characteristics will be revisited, as they relate to several of the other perspectives that will be examined in this chapter.

Educational Context

One area where the difference between multi-active and linear active culture may be an important factor is in the area of education. In this section we will focus mainly on Costa Rica and the USA. The rationale for focusing on Costa Rica is two-fold. First, Costa Rica adopted the use of education to address critical environmental issues in the late 1980s when they were dealing with deforestation and the government wanted to educate the general population about the need to protect forested areas (Quesada, 1993). Those education efforts focused mainly on children (Sutherland & Ham, 1992), but since there was not time to wait for those children to grow up to be leaders, there also had to be efforts to educate adults (Medina, 1989). The second reason for focusing on Costa Rica is because there is more literature available on the outcomes of their educational efforts, partially because the population of Costa Rica is more than ten times larger than the population of Belize, and also because of these well-described, historical efforts to teach environmental issues.

There have been several studies that have examined the effectiveness of intergenerational transfer of information. Many of these studies have been conducted in Australia, a former British colony, and have documented mixed results. Ballantyne et al. found that whether the children talked to their parents about the environmental topics they were learning about in school depended on a number of factors (1998). Two of the most important factors were that students were more likely to initiate conversations with their parents if they enjoyed the educational program, and homework could be an effective strategy to get parents involved in the educational process.

A study conducted in Quebrada Ganado, Costa Rica, took this a step further by tracking the dissemination of environmental education from students to their parents; however, they also looked at whether community members that did not have children in the educational program were affected (Vaughan et al., 2003). The environmental program focused on conservation of the Scarlet Macaws, a threatened species of bird that was present near the village and therefore would be of interest to the students. Quebrada Ganado is a small village and 80 percent of the residents work in the tourism industry, so information about these birds would also be of interest to many of the adults. In the study, the individuals in each of the groups took a pre-test before the educational program began, then took two post-tests. One post-test was at the end of the course and the second post-test was after 8 months. The participants in the program were 3rd and 4th graders, and the students were given a coloring book that was associated with homework assignments. Homework involved the students reading the coloring book with their parents and answering worksheet questions based on the information in the book, and the parents had to sign the homework (Vaughan et al., 2003).

The education program in Quebrada Ganado incorporated the two factors that Ballantyne et al. (1998) found most important for intergenerational transfer of information: a topic that was interesting to the students and homework that engaged the parents. In the immediate post-test, they found that the students’ knowledge about Scarlet Macaws had improved by 71 percent and the parents had improved by 38 percent, but the control group of adults that did not have children involved in the program did not change. On the second post-test 8 months after the program, the students’ scores were still 67 percent better than their pre-test scores, the parents had improved to 52 percent better than the pre-test, and the control group of adults had improved 29 percent over their pre-test scores (Vaughan, et al., 2003). The authors theorized that the parents learned from the children and the neighbors learned from both the parents and the children. This transfer of information beyond the family seems much more likely to occur in a multi-active culture such as Costa Rica, where relationships are particularly important. If you have ever spent an evening sitting on a town square in Costa Rica or other Latin American countries watching conversations going on, you can appreciate how this transfer of information about environmental issues may have occurred.

When we conduct the course on leadership in conservation we stay at a field station in Costa Rica that is a perfect example of the impact that intergenerational dissemination of environmental information can have. The land was purchased by a man who runs a lumber company, with the intention of cutting the existing secondary and primary forest and replacing the forest with a tree plantation planted with fast-growing non-native trees. The purchase of the land was necessary because of legislation that stipulated that forest resources can only be harvested from privately owned land or indigenous reserves (Navarro & Thiel, 2007). The man had already started the process of clearing and replanting the land when his children learned in school about the importance of protecting the remaining forests in Costa Rica. Based on conversations he had with his children, he decided to look into other options for the land that did not require cutting the forest. Developing the field station was an option because of Forest Law 7575, which introduced the innovative concept of paying forest owners for environmental services if they apply sustainable practices in the management of their lands (Navarro & Thiel, 2007). Because of something that his children learned in school, a block of primary forest that backs up on a large area of protected forest was not cut for lumber and is now instead a field station where both local and international students and researchers learn about tropical rainforest ecosystems (I. Mesen, personal communication, 2015).

The Costa Rican environmental education about deforestation that started in the late 1980s provided a framework for teaching about forest conservation. This framework could then be used to address other environmental issues such as sustainability, energy conservation, and climate change. The fact that so many of the people that were surveyed for our course research project indicated that they understood how climate change occurs suggests that this framework has worked, and the Costa Rican population is educated about this current environmental problem.

In contrast, a study conducted in the USA in 2016 found that most students were exposed to the topic of climate change, but how the subject was taught was often less than optimal (Plutzer et al., 2016). They found that the median teacher only devotes 1–2 hours to the topic, less than is recommended (National Research Council, 2012). Plutzer et al. found that slightly more than half of teachers (54 percent) that teach about climate change emphasize the scientific consensus “that recent global warming is primarily being caused by human release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels” (2016). Of the teachers that do not emphasize the scientific consensus, most (31 percent of the total) send a mixed message by both stating the scientific consensus but also indicating “that many scientists believe that recent increases in temperature are likely due to natural causes.” This might result from teachers attempting to teach both sides of the issue in an attempt to accommodate beliefs brought to the classroom by the students, or because the teachers are not sure of the content for this relatively new topic (Plutzer et al., 2016).

One might expect that teachers who do not feel comfortable with a topic would rely on experts; however, most teachers were not aware of how extensive the scientific agreement on climate change is. When asked “what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?” only 30 percent of US middle school teachers picked the correct answer, “81–100 percent,” and high school teachers only fared slightly better at 45 percent (Plutzer et al., 2016). Since more than half of the teachers thought that a significant percentage of scientists disagreed that climate change is primarily caused by humans, it makes sense that they would be willing to teach both sides of what they perceived to be a two-sided issue (Plutzer et al., 2016). Finally, this study recognized that the solution to improving education about climate change might not be as simple as providing training for teachers to improve their knowledge of the subject. The best predictor of how a teacher approached teaching climate change was their political ideology, not their knowledge of the content (Plutzer et al., 2016).

So why is there so much confusion about the extent of the scientific consensus on climate change? In part this is a result of a campaign similar to the one used by tobacco companies to challenge the scientific consensus linking smoking tobacco to lung cancer in the 1970s. One of the organizations involved in both campaigns was the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank whose mission is to “promote free-market solutions” (Heartland Institute, 2017). The campaign to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change gained momentum in the USA in 2008 and 2009. Public opinion was moving in the direction of addressing climate change, President Obama had been elected and a cap and trade bill had been passed by the House of Representatives, and it looked like there were 60 votes for the bill in the Senate (Upin & Hockenberry, 2012). The strategy became to attack the consensus and claim that there was enough uncertainty to require delay and more studies.

This strategy of attacking the cap and trade bill paired well with the anti-tax, anti-big government message of the Tea Party. This resulted in a lot of pressure being put on senators from their constituents. This pressure was reinforced by the economic downturn in 2008 and the cap and trade bill ended up being tabled in the Senate in January of 2009. One of the Heartland Institute’s missions has been to promote doubt and confusion about the scientific consensus on climate change by organizing conferences and presenters and publishing books and pamphlets. Recently they have capitalized on the name recognition of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and have titled their recent publication as “Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus,” where the acronym NIPCC stands for the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change” (Heartland Institute, 2017). This document has been professionally prepared to give the impression that it is authoritative, and as of June 2017 it has been sent out to 300,000 K–12 and college science teachers with a cover letter that encourages them to use the materials as a counterpoint to the IPCC reports so that teachers can teach “both sides” of the debate (Heartland Institute, 2017).

However, the NIPCC document primarily repackages old climate change skeptic arguments that have been discredited. The National Center for Science Education authored a critical review of the NIPCC document shortly after the first edition was sent out, pointing out the many shortcomings of the NIPCC document compared to the United Nations IPCC report (National Center for Science Education, 2014).

Economic Context

Part of the explanation for why there is a campaign to discredit climate change science in the USA, but not in Costa Rica and Belize, can be tied back to economics. The Heartland Institute has received funding from conservative foundations, individuals, and corporations, including fossil fuel companies. The United States has extensive fossil fuel resources and is home to powerful corporations that are involved in extracting those resources, whereas neither Costa Rica nor Belize have significant fossil fuel resources. Using crude oil as an example, in 2016 it was estimated that the USA has over 36 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, compared to 0.0067 billion barrels for Belize and 0 barrels for Costa Rica (CIA, 2017).

The availability of fossil fuels in these countries is also reflected in the way that electricity is generated. In the USA in 2012, 73.5 percent of electricity was generated from fossil fuels, while in Belize 46.9 percent of electricity was produced from fossil fuels, and in Costa Rica only 30.7 percent of the electricity was produced from fossil fuels (CIA, 2017). In Belize and Costa Rica the rest of the electricity was produced from renewable sources such as hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, and wind.

In fact, this data may understate the current situation, since in 2015 Costa Rica was able to produce 99 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and a new hydroelectric facility began operation in 2016 (Phys.org, 2015). In both Costa Rica and Belize, the historic reliance on importing fossil fuels resulted in a higher cost for electricity. This served as an incentive for consumers to conserve electricity and there were also programs in place as early as 2007 to encourage the use of compact fluorescent bulbs. We observed the widespread use of compact fluorescent bulbs in Costa Rica in 2009, well before they were commonly seen in the USA. The cost of generating electricity from fossil fuels also served as an incentive to the Costa Rican and Belizean governments and the electricity generating companies to pursue renewable sources, often partnering with foreign countries to obtain the capital needed to develop these facilities.

There is always resistance to change. In the cases of Costa Rica and Belize, the high cost of generating electricity using imported fossil fuels was enough of an incentive to offset resistance to change. In the USA, the availability of fossil fuels, and in particular the availability of coal and now cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing, have kept the cost of electricity relatively low, and there has been less incentive to adopt renewable sources of electricity. In fact, there has been active resistance from the corporations that would like to maintain the status quo.

Media Context

We would like to finish our examination of how followers learn about climate change in the three countries by looking at media as a source of information. As mentioned earlier, our survey found that the percentage of participants that trusted scientists, business groups, and industry scientists was nearly identical in all three countries. In contrast, the level of trust in television news was highest in Costa Rica (USA – 50 percent; Costa Rica – 77 percent; Belize – 56 percent) and the level of trust in newspapers was higher in both Belize and Costa Rica (USA – 45 percent; Costa Rica – 63 percent; Belize – 64 percent). The following information on freedom of the press in the three countries was obtained from Freedom House. This organization produces reports and we used the full annual reports that were closest to the year that we conducted the survey (the 2014 report for Belize and the 2015 reports for Costa Rica and the USA).

Freedom House assesses the freedom of the press in a country by scoring the legal, political, and economic environments as they relate to the media in the country. For each of these the lower the score, the more free the press, and the overall sum of the scores for these three categories is used to rate the overall freedom of the press (Freedom House, 2017). Scores for all three countries are listed below in Table 1. Using Costa Rica as an example, the legal environment received a low score of 4 because the Constitution protects freedom of the press, and although there was a 1902 printing press law that allowed for prison sentences for defamation, that law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2010 (Freedom House, 2017). At 7 the score for the political environment was also low and the report noted that there might be some self-censoring by journalists as a result of the fear of possible legal reprisals, but journalists rarely faced threats or violence and there were no incidents reported in 2014 (Freedom House, 2017). The political environment score also takes into account the independence of news outlets and the ability of the populace to access information and sources.

The good score for Costa Rica’s press in regard to the political environment may at least partially explain the high level of trust that we observed in our surveys for both print and broadcast media. If the press is viewed as being independent, it is more likely to be trusted. Finally, the economic environment for media was rated as 6 and the media sector of the economy was described as having numerous private and public newspapers and TV and radio stations. Under the economic environment the report also noted that approximately half of the population had access to internet, and although this was low compared to other countries, it was improving.

Freedom House defines countries with a free press as having a total score of less than 30, so all three countries have freedom of the press (Freedom House, 2017). For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus primarily on the scores for the political environment in comparing the three countries, since this is more closely related to the perceived trust in the media. In Costa Rica private media sources tend to be owned by individuals that are politically conservative, but the number of sources available in the market helps to offset this. In contrast, in Belize political parties are associated with newspapers and radio stations and many of these sources therefore have a partisan bias (Freedom House, 2017). The higher score for the media’s political environment in the USA reflects the appearance of polarization. The report indicated that the popularity of mostly conservative talk radio, all-news cable channels, and blogs contributed to the perception of polarization, but that most newspapers and major news agencies avoided bias (Freedom House, 2017). Ironically, efforts to appear unbiased have probably contributed to the confusion associated with climate change. Even though the science is largely settled on climate change, the attacks on that consensus and the politicizing of climate change have resulted in many news sources opting to present “both sides” of the argument in the interest of balance, with conservative news sources often providing a platform for those who deny the existence of anthropomorphic climate change. Groups like the Heartland Institute have been happy to provide spokespersons to argue for the opposition.

After examining factors that could have an impact on the education about climate change of followers in Belize, Costa Rica, and the USA, it appears that the primary difference is related to economic factors, in particular the availability of fossil fuels resources. Unlike Costa Rica and Belize, the USA has extensive fossil fuel resources, so there has not been a comparable economic incentive to pursue renewable energy sources. More importantly, those individuals in the USA that were involved in fossil fuel industries had an economic reason to preserve the status quo. This led to efforts to question the science of climate change as a means of slowing down the response to it. The strategies used by groups such as the Heartland Institute have been to publicize any perceived controversy and attack the scientific consensus. This has had an impact on teaching climate change in schools, and they continue to attempt to influence teachers through publications such as the NIPCC Report. This has also likely impacted the perception of climate change in the media by promoting the impression that there are a significant number of scientists that disagree with the climate change science. Another aspect of the efforts to attack the science of climate change is that it has been conflated with the anti-tax and anti-big government orientation of conservative politics. This politicization of climate change will pose problems to any efforts to educate the US population about climate change, which we will discuss at the end of this chapter.

Other factors, such as Costa Rica’s history of using education as a way to address environmental issues and the multi-active culture of Costa Rica, may have contributed to the successful education of the general population about the topic of climate change. The history of addressing environmental issues in grade schools provided a framework for teaching children about climate change. Costa Rica’s multi-active culture and the importance of relationships in the culture may have then facilitated the distribution of that information to the children’s parents and to other people in the community.

Relevance of Climate Change to Followers

In addition to educating followers about the issue, a second important factor that is needed to gain buy-in from followers is to show them how the issue is relevant to them. To get at whether climate change was relevant to the people we surveyed, we included a question about whether they have been affected by it in each of the surveys that we have conducted. In our survey in 2015, 77 percent of the participants in Costa Rica and 59 percent of the participants in Belize indicated that they had been affected by climate change. The Yale Environment Survey does not specifically ask this question, but in the 2016 version of the survey they asked whether “global warming is already harming people in the US,” and 51 percent of the participants agreed with this statement. When asked more specifically whether “global warming will harm me personally,” only 40 percent responded that they thought they would be affected in the future (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2016). What are possible explanations for this difference? Why do the majority of people in Costa Rica and Belize claim that they are already being affected by climate change, while only 40 percent in the USA expect that they will be affected in the future? There are several possible explanations for this difference.

One difference that might make it more likely for people in Costa Rica and Belize to recognize that the climate is changing is related to the fact that both of these countries are tropical. Because they are closer to the equator than the USA, there is less seasonal change in temperature during the year and instead the seasons are more associated with precipitation, for example a wet and dry season. The average high temperature in San Jose, Costa Rica, varies from 75^o F in January to 80^o F in May. There is a little bit more of a range of high temperatures in Belize, but it is still only from 80^o F in January to 87^o F in May (Canty & Frischling, 2017). It could be argued that having more stable temperatures across seasons makes it easier for people in tropical countries to recognize slight increases in temperature from year to year. In temperate countries where there are large seasonal changes in temperature, it is more difficult to recognize small changes from year to year: for example, Chicago, Illinois’ coldest month is January with an average high temperature of 31^o F, and the warmest month is July with an average high of 84^o F. However, this is unlikely to be the only explanation, since the European countries also have a temperate climate and have a much higher percentage of people that recognize that climate change is occurring.

Another possible difference between these countries is the proportion of the population that is involved in occupations that are dependent on the climate/weather, the argument being that people that are dependent on the weather for their livelihood would be more likely to recognize changes. In the USA in 2009, 0.7 percent of the labor force was in agriculture, forestry, or fishing jobs. In Belize an estimate from 2007 was that 10.2 percent of the labor force was involved in agriculture, and in Costa Rica 14 percent of labor was in agriculture in 2010. The estimate for Costa Rica is probably low, since it does not include immigrant workers that often work in agriculture, and it did not include figures for forestry and fishing (CIA, 2017).

One other possible explanation for why people in Belize and Costa Rica are more likely to claim that they have been affected by climate change is because they equate changes in the behaviors of animals with climate change. When students were conducting the survey, the subjects would often tell them about changes that they had observed. As an example, the Terciopelo (Bothrops asper) is a poisonous snake found in Costa Rica. Historically, it has only been found at lower elevations because locations like Monte Verde were too cloudy and cool. As the climate has warmed, Monte Verde has fewer clouds and it is warmer and drier than it was and Terciopelos have now been found in Monte Verde. Our students have also heard similar stories about changes in the distribution of scorpions, frogs, and birds. It may be difficult to recognize gradual changes in temperature, but if an animal or a plant starts to be seen someplace that it did not use to live, or its behavior changes, that tends to catch people’s attention.

The fact that people in Costa Rica and Belize are more likely to recognize that they have been affected is probably the result of a combination of these factors. Because more people in these countries are involved in agriculture or know someone that is involved in agriculture, they have probably heard how changing climate has affected agriculture. As a result, they might be more observant and more likely to notice changes in temperature or biological responses to the changing climate. In any case, the fact that more people in Costa Rica and Belize believe that they have been affected by climate change indicates that this is an issue that is relevant for these populations.

Role of Followers in Addressing Climate Change

For complex global issues like climate change, it is easy for an individual to feel like what they do will not have an impact. If an individual doubts that what they do will have an impact, they are unlikely to be committed to doing anything to address the problem. Thus, in addition to educating followers and showing them the relevance of the problem, the third factor that is necessary for leaders to get buy-in from followers is being able to show them that there is a solution and they can contribute to reaching the goal. In the Yale Environment Survey there were two statements that addressed this factor. The first was “It is my responsibility to help reduce the impacts of global warming”; 81 percent of responses in the USA agreed with this (Yale Environmental Poll, 2007). When we used the same statement in our survey in Costa Rica and Belize in 2012, 95 percent or more of the participants in each country agreed with the statement. The second statement in the Yale Environment Survey was, “My behavior can help to reduce the impacts of global warming,” and 75 percent of the responses in the USA agreed with this statement (Yale Environmental Poll, 2007). We used this statement in both our 2012 and 2015 surveys. In 2012, 96 percent of Costa Ricans and 93 percent of Belizeans agreed with the statement. In 2015, the proportion of people agreeing with the statement had decreased in both countries, to 92 percent in Costa Rica and 78 percent in Belize. It is not clear why the percentage of subjects agreeing with this statement dropped from 2012 to 2015 in both Belize and Costa Rica. We will be collecting survey data again in 2018 and we are interested to see whether this trend continues.

In both Costa Rica and Belize, the survey results indicate that the people have largely accepted that they are responsible for helping to address climate change and that they can have an impact. This success is likely at least partially the result of the way that short-term goals, such as saving money on electricity through conservation, and intermediate-term goals, such as benefits to the environment, have been linked to the long-term goal of shifting to renewable sources of energy as a way to reduce greenhouse gas production. Seeing positive results with respect to the short-term goals provides encouragement that the long-term goals can also be reached.

Although the percentage of positive responses to these comments was not as high in the USA survey, it was still encouraging that the results were as high as they were. Unfortunately, the groups that are opposed to making changes to address climate change realize that this is an important component of engaging followers. Arguments that are often heard are: What difference do our actions actually make? If we reduce carbon dioxide emissions, someone else will produce more, so why bother? In fact, this was one of the arguments that was used by the Trump administration to justify the withdrawal of the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement. One of the talking points cited a study done by a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that estimated how much of an impact the agreement would have on global temperatures. The talking point was that there would be very little impact on temperature, with the implied message, “It will not have much of an impact, so why bother?” The group at MIT has issued a statement that explains how their data was used inappropriately and was presented in a way that was misleading (MIT News, 2017). The MIT statement clarified that their study predicted that the average temperature would be 1^o Celsius lower in the year 2100 with the Paris Climate Agreement than it would be without a climate policy. In making their prediction, they also assumed that the commitments made by countries would not be strengthened after 2030, even though the agreement plans for annual meetings to revisit the goals and set more ambitious goals over time (MIT News, 2017).

Conclusion

Survey data has been used to assess whether populations in three countries are educated about climate change, understand how it is relevant to their lives, and believe that there is a solution and they can have a role in addressing the problem of climate change. All three of these are important in order for leaders to have engaged followers, something that is particularly important in order to address a complicated problem like climate change. Two of the countries, Costa Rica and Belize, are making progress in all of these areas based on the survey results and are likely to have engaged followers in their efforts to address this problem. These two countries have also made progress on converting to renewable sources of electricity – in particular Costa Rica, which has been able to produce most of its electricity from renewable resources for the past 2 years.

In the USA, fewer participants in the surveys demonstrated these characteristics. In particular, the percentage of participants that knew about climate change and that it was primarily caused by human activity was lower, and the percentage that realized that climate change either was impacting them in the present, or would impact them in the future, was also lower. The most recent Yale Climate Opinion Maps based on surveys collected in 2016 contain some data that is encouraging but also data that is troubling. The results for questions related to policies for responding to climate change were generally encouraging. Eighty-two percent of participants “supported funding research into renewable energy sources” and 75 percent “supported regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.” There was also encouraging news in regard to whether the subjects “trust climate scientists about global warming,” with 71 percent indicating that they do trust these scientists (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2016). There have been a lot of ad hominem attacks on climate scientists, either attacking specific scientists or suggesting that scientists alter their data so that they can continue to receive grants. It is encouraging to see that these attacks have not had a larger impact on the general population’s trust in these climate experts.

The last two data points are the most disturbing and point out the significant challenges that will need to be addressed by those wishing to show leadership on this issue. Slightly more than half of the subjects (53 percent) agreed with the statement that “global warming is caused mostly by human activities” (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2016). So only half of the people surveyed accept the climate scientists’ consensus that most of the observed increase in temperature is the result of human activity, in particular the release of greenhouse gases. This does not seem to make sense when you consider that 71 percent of the subjects trust climate scientists. This anomaly between how many subjects trust climate scientists and how many agree with the consensus on climate change is explained by the next data point. Only 49 percent of the subjects agreed with the statement that “most scientists think global warming is happening” (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2016). This points out how effective the misinformation promoted by groups such as the Heartland Institute has been. These groups have provided a forum for a small group of climate change skeptics and have attacked the science and scientists involved in studying climate change. By doing this they have given more than half of the population the impression that the science is uncertain, when there is actually extensive agreement by scientists that climate change is occurring and what is causing it.

If the USA wants to become a leader in the response to climate change, the main follower characteristic that will need to be addressed is their education about climate change. Unfortunately, it will not be as simple as merely communicating information from the climate scientists to the general population (for further discussion and documentation of this point, see Chapter 9 in this collection by Redekop and Thomas). As has been stated earlier, the topic of climate change has been politicized and for many people has acquired the characteristic of a value or belief. And it is much more challenging to change someone’s values or beliefs than it is to educate them on a “neutral” topic.

Environmental leaders often fail to take into full consideration the importance – and beliefs – of their followers. As argued at the beginning of this chapter, leaders cannot address the problems posed by global climate change on their own. They need effective, committed followers to achieve the common purpose of stopping global warming and mitigating its effects. Environmental leaders who fail to recognize this do so at the peril of this common purpose, but there is hope. Quoting Follett once again, “Loyalty to the invisible leader gives us the strongest possible bond of union, establishes a sympathy which is not a sentimental but a dynamic sympathy” (Follett, 1933/2003, p. 172). This is the type of bond, sympathy, and commitment leaders and followers must have to address the problems facing our environment. Leaders must realize that this common purpose is much bigger than themselves and they must rally their followers to this invisible leader if they hope to address the problem of climate change. In doing so, they must understand their followers, their beliefs and values, and the contextual factors that have an impact on them.

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