Public understanding of the water system is vital in confronting contemporary water challenges, as public support is necessary for implementing measures to address shortages and repair infrastructure. In this study, university student participants (N = 457) were asked todrawdiagrams illustrating how water reaches the tap in an average home in the U.S. and is then returned to the natural environment. We also conducted an expert elicitation (N = 15) to create a simplified, accurate diagram by which to code each student drawing. Results showed major gaps in understanding, where 29% of the student participants did not draw a water treatment plant, 64% did not draw a wastewater treatment plant, and 1 in 5 participants depicted untreated wastewater returning to the natural environment. For the majority of non-environmental students, the water system stops at the home. These gaps reveal a critical area for public environmental education efforts.

A wide variety of existing narratives describe how we might address climate change. Which of these approaches is popular among the American public? Do the general public and their elected officials accurately perceive which climate solutions are popular? We assess personal endorsement and perceptions of public support in national representative samples of the U.S. public (N = 1500) and local-level U.S. policymakers (N = 500). Proactive narratives, like ones advocating for both personal behavior and policy action, are widely endorsed, but both the public and policymakers greatly underestimate their popularity (a case of pluralistic ignorance), especially for narratives calling for systemic change. Greater endorsement of these narratives corresponded to greater willingness to take personal and political actions and support climate policy. We also find experimental exposure to some climate narratives (N = 2060) may increase participants’ behavioral intentions and policy support, suggesting which narratives are spread in popular media is important to help address climate change.

Large-scale solar (LSS) systems represent an increasing share of energy infrastructure in the United States. The number of LSS systems is expected to continue to grow, and such expansion will require support from local communities that are asked to host new projects. Here, we perform a systematic literature review of studies that evaluate: (1) the factors that shape the perception, acceptance, and opposition of LSS; and (2) the role of stakeholders and community engagement in current LSS siting conflicts. Our review of the literature finds that local communities have complex, location-specific opinions and attitudes towards solar projects. Shaped by project characteristics such as size, land use type, and project ownership type, people value local benefits such as jobs, reduced pollution, increased tax revenue, and local ownership, and are critical of highly localized burdens such as impacts to the local landscape. We further find that scholars promote early and direct communication of potential benefits and tradeoffs, as well as an inclusive decision-making process and engagement activities that reflect community values and build trust. Our review reveals that further research is needed to investigate the roles and impacts of: (1) emerging LSS configurations such as solar plus storage hybrids and LSS projects paired with transmission and substation additions; (2) evolving LSS stakeholder groups including landowners, agricultural industry, and the media; and (3) causal relationships between public perceptions, community engagement activities, and project outcomes.

Climate solutions related to mitigation and adaptation vary across the United States and India, given their unique current socio-political–technological abilities and their histories. Here, we discuss results from online face-to-face interviews undertaken with 33 U.S.-based climate experts and 30 India-based climate experts. Using qualitative grounded theory, we explore open-ended responses to questions related to mitigation and adaptation and find the following: (1) there is broad agreement among experts in both countries on the main mitigation solutions focused on the decarbonization of energy systems, but (2) there are a diversity of views between experts on what to prioritize and how to achieve it. Similarly, there is substantial agreement that adaptation solutions are needed to address agriculture, water management, and infrastructure, but there is a wide variety of perspectives on other priorities and how best to proceed. Experts across both countries generally perceived mitigation as needing national policies to succeed, while adaptation is perceived as more local and challenging given the larger number of stakeholders involved in planning and implementation. Our findings indicate that experts agree on the goals of decarbonization, but there was no consensus on how best to accomplish implementation.