A new paper by economists Matthew Kahn and Matthew Kotchen uses google search data to investigate whether people show less interest in environmental issues as they become more concerned about unemployment.
We find that higher unemployment rates within a state decrease internet search activity for global warming, but increase search activity for unemployment. Based on this revealed preference for interest in global warming, therefore, it appears that recessions crowd out concern for the environment, while not surprisingly increasing concern about unemployment. Interestingly, the magnitudes of the two effects are very similar despite having opposite signs, which is at least consistent with the notion that one crowds out the other.
The decline is larger in Democratic leaning states, perhaps because people in these states have initially higher interest in global warming. The authors also find that increases in a state’s unemployment rate are correlated with increased beliefs that global warming is a hoax.
The authors argue that this supports the notion that environmental concerns are a luxury good, in the sense that these concerns seem to rise to the front when economic times are good and recede when times are bad. In political science and sociology we would call this a post-materialist concern. This characterization is quite old (although not entirely uncontroversial) but the use of internet search data is novel and interesting. All of this does of course not mean that recession is bad for global warming (at least in the short -term): it is hard to think of any policy initiative that would reduce CO2 emissions more than a good old fashioned economic downturn.