What will it really take to get the public to make tradeoffs on energy?

It’s a fundamental question, because energy policy is all about the tradeoffs. No form of energy is perfect. Everything comes with pros and cons. The key to moving forward is figuring out what people will accept: how much will they pay, what risks are they willing to accept, and what alternatives we should pursue.

The latest survey on this issue, published in Nature Climate Change and conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, tries to pin down how much people will pay for cleaner energy. The survey concludes that most Americans would