Robert Stavins: "Unlike the environmental threats addressed successfully in past U.S. legislation, climate change is essentially unobservable to the general population"

Can Market Forces Really be Employed to Address Climate Change? | Harvard University – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs – An Economic View of the Environment

But climate change is distinctly different. Unlike the environmental threats addressed successfully in past U.S. legislation, climate change is essentially unobservable to the general population. We observe the weather, not the climate. Until there is an obvious and sudden event – such as a loss of part of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to a dramatic sea-level rise – it is unlikely that public opinion in the United States will provide the bottom-up demand for action that inspired previous congressional action on the environment over the past forty years.