There are two sorts of political and policy actions possible with respect to climate change: "mitigation" and "adaptation."

Mitigation requires voluntary societal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, either through energy conservation measures or switching to alternative fuels that do not emit carbon dioxide, such as wind and solar power. It is voluntary in the sense that, as a society, we will have to choose to incur those costs. Or we won't.

Adaptation is something we will have little choice about.To the extent that the vast majority of scientists who study climate are correct about the coming changes, we will have to adjust to things like rising sea level, changing weather patterns that could require changes in the way we go about feeding ourselves, and, here in the Southwest, generally drier weather with more severe droughts. The amount of adaptation we have to do will depend in part on how successful mitigation efforts are. But there is already a lot of climate change in the pipeline. We we will have to adapt no matter what.

With the New Mexico legislature poised to consider potentially significant greenhouse gas reduction legislation, along with an apparent commitment by the new Obama administration (action in the mitigation category) a new study out today from the Pew Research Center sheds some interesting light on the political difficulties ahead.

In the study, from the respected pollster Andrew Kohut and his colleagues, action on climate change ranked dead last among issues respondents said where among their top priorities for government action. The message here is entirely consistent with previous polling Pew and others have done. When asked, people generally say they support action on climate change. But when times get tough, climate change in particular and environmental issues in general tend to take a back seat to other issues. In this poll, support for action on environmental issues dropped 15 points from a year ago. From Pew's report:

The 15-point decline in the percentage calling environmental protection a top priority this year is steep, but not unprecedented given the broader shift in public priorities.

Writing on his Dotearth blog, the New York Times' Andy Revkin this morning characterized it this way:

The latest in an annual series of polls from the Pew Research Center on people’s top priorities for their elected leaders shows that America and President Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming. Mr. Obama stressed the issue throughout his campaign and several times in his inaugural speech, mentioning stabilizing climate in the same breath as preventing nuclear conflict at one point.

Ryan Avent was more blunt: We're doomed.