Adler is correct, I think, when he writes: “Does this mean that Americans are less supportive of environmental protection than in the past? I doubt it.”  Indeed, if you look at the poll itself, it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a whole lot of data to support that contention.  In what strikes me as a bit of wishful thinking, however, Adler then surmises:

One possibility is that an increasing percentage of Americans reject the idea that the environmentalist movement has a monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Americans who support environmental protection may feel uncomfortable with either the tactics or policy prescriptions embraced by establishment environmental groups. If so, it should not be much of a surprise.

A decade or so ago --back in my own activist/think tank days -- I commissioned polling work on what Americans believed it meant to be "pro-environment," finding that many Americans saw "conservative" approaches to environmental protection -- e.g. decentralization, protection of property rights, non-regulatory measures, etc. -- as "pro-environment." (See summaries here and here.)

I believed then -- and believe now -- that this and other polling data suggest that establishment environmentalist groups lack an enforceable monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Insofar as conventional "greens" dominate the field, it is by default. Conservative and libertarian types generally -- and conservative politicians in particular -- have largely ceded the field. They either endorse conventional policies on the cheap, or oppose establishment environmentalist proposals outright without proposing a positive alternative.

As I’ve written about before, the fundamental problem with this line of reasoning is that it mistakes the environmental movement for one that can be easily assigned a place on the conservative-to-liberal spectrum.  While that may well have been true at one time, I don’t think it’s nearly as true today as it once was.  In fact, “establishment environmental groups” are far more pragmatic than most commentors give them credit for and are more than willing to embrace the kind policy prescriptions that Professor Adler mentions—if they work.  Look at the mainstream environmental support for a cap-and-trade mechanism (which is, at its base, a market mechanism) to control global warming pollution.  Or the support by some groups for individual fishing quotas (a property-rights approach to the tragedy of the commons). 

But—and here’s the crucial difference with many of those who try to create “conservative” environmental agendas—environmental groups in my experience don’t reject or accept solutions to environmental problems based on how they fit into a predetermined ideological spectrum.  Do many within the environmental movement have biases and preconceptions?  Of course.  And do some of those biases make them skeptical of  things like “decentralization”?  Mine certainly do.  But if you have to ask whether an environmental policy is “conservative” or “protects property rights” in order to support it, then I would suggest that your agenda has more to do with something other than protecting the environment.

So why the poll result?  As Frank Luntz famously pointed out in his 2003 memo to Republicans about how to communicate about the environment: “‘Environmentalism’ can have the connotation of extremism to many Americans, particularly outside of the Northeast.” 

Such things do not happen by accident, of course.  Just like the term “liberal”  and “religious right” did not spontaneously acquire negative connotations, I believe there has been a concerted effort to brand “environmentalists” as extremists, self-righteous, nature worshippers, etc., by our political opponents.  That effort is the more likely explanation for ABC’s poll results than a need for a “conservative” environmentalism.

Slow warming doesn't make for memorable images on television or in people's minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an ''availability cascade,'' a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. 

Tierney then goes on to mention other studies that he claims cast doubt on the reality or severity of global warming, but that he thinks didn't attract as much press coverage (I'll leave it to others who are so inclined to go through those studies in detail, but suffice it to say that they aren't nearly as persuasive as Tierney implies).  Putting the science aside for a moment, I think it's worth noting two problems with Tierney's argument.

First, Tierney imputes a semi-conspiratorial agenda to a diverse set of people where none may exist and, like all conspiracy theories, it suffers from needless complexity.  Rather than supposing that "activists, journalists and scientists" are working to create a complex psycho-cultural phenomena in order to influence the debate over global warming another, simpler explanation, exists: these folks actually believe what they are saying.  If a scientist publishes a peer-reviewed paper in a scientific journal which links a decline in prey availability for polar bears with a decline in Arctic sea ice, isn't the best explanation of his behavior that he actually believes what his article says?  Similarly, if a journalist writes an article about the impact of melting sea ice on polar bears, isn't it more likely the case that he is trying to report the news on a complex subject, rather than being an "availability entrepreneur"?  The same is true for activists.  We take positions that we think are scientifically and legally correct and we advocate policies that we think offer real solutions to real problems.  If there's a strategic "availability cascade" memo floating around at NRDC, I've missed it.  Finally, the idea that journalists, scientists and activists are even loosely coordinating their efforts to create such a cascade is a bit of a laugh.  Heck, even environmental activists can't always agree on the right approach to solving global warming and journalists and scientists are not well-known for working in lock step.  Journalism, and particularly science, are fields that reward competition and the overturning of conventional wisdoms.

Second, one has to ask: why is Tierney writing this column to begin with?  It's one thing for an academic like Cass Sunstein to write papers about the phenomena of the "availability cascade" in public debate, but John Tierney is a columnist with a pretty clear agenda on global warming. A quick search of a news database revealed that Tierney has written about thirty columns that mention global warming while at the New York Times, nearly all of them skeptical of climate change or environmental protections in general, and some of them given charming titles like "Cheer Up, Earth Day is Over." For him to write a opinion column gnashing his teeth about how people with agendas are supposedly trying to influence the debate about global warming is, to say the least, a true exercise in chutzpah. 

In short, Tierney has taken an interesting sociological theory about how the public comes to perceive risk and has turned it into a pretty thin conspiracy theory with a whiff of sour grapes.

UPDATE:  Joseph O'Sullivan informs me that Tierney's column is available in the Science section here.