Public Polling on Climate Change

Congressional Climate Camp 2023

Find out more about the briefings in this series below:

Budget and Appropriations

Public Polling on Climate Change

Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases

Implementing the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Ready to make a difference in climate policy? But not sure where to start? We have you covered. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to join us for our start-of-the-new Congress briefing series, Climate Camp. We will go over the basics of the legislative process, highlighting key areas and opportunities for climate mitigation and adaptation policy. 

Our second session in EESI’s Congressional Climate Camp series explores the public’s interest in seeing continued federal attention on climate change. Forty-six percent of people in the United States say they have personally experienced the impacts of climate change and 55 percent of people say that climate change should be a high or very high priority for Congress and the administration, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Panelist explored the latest analyses of public opinion on climate change across sectors and geography and explain why it matters for the 118th Congress.

 

Highlights

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Americans are increasingly convinced that global warming is happening, human-caused, and a serious problem. Americans also increasingly understand that climate impacts are here and now and would like to see more government action. There is strong bipartisan consensus around putting a price on carbon (especially as a revenue-neutral tax), planting trees, and investing in a clean energy transition. Black, Hispanic and Latino, and lower-income Americans are among the groups most concerned about climate change, yet people often perceive these groups as among the least concerned. Among Americans, there is low recognition of the unequal impacts of climate change across the United States even though race and class are some of the strongest risk factors when it comes to exposure to environmental hazards. Americans who have experienced the impacts of severe weather events are significantly more likely to support policies for grid resilience, disaster preparedness, and greenhouse gas emission reductions.

 

Anthony Leiserowitz, Director, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale School of the Environment, Yale University

• According to the Climate Change in the American Mind project, a majority of Americans agree climate change is happening, and only 16 percent of Americans still think climate change is not happening.
• There remains a fundamental misconception among many Americans that global warming is caused by natural changes in the environment, and when people think global warming is a natural phenomenon rather than human-caused, they do not understand the urgency to take action. Fifty eight percent of Americans understand that global warming is caused mostly by human activity.
• Polls show that Americans are increasingly concerned about climate change, with almost two-thirds of respondents reporting being at least somewhat worried. However, many Americans think of climate change as a distant problem, both in terms of time and space. About half of Americans think global warming is harming people in the United States right now.
• Nearly half of Americans say they have personally experienced the effects of global warming. Members of Congress can help their constituents connect the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events in their communities to climate change.
• Yale Climate Opinion Maps show how Americans’ climate change understanding, risk perceptions, and policy support vary at the state, Congressional district, metro area, and county levels, and it reveals some surprising findings.
• For example, if you look at Texas, you can see that counties along the Mexican border are more worried about climate change than most of the counties in California. Latinos are one of the groups that care the most about climate change.
• A majority of Americans think that Congress should be doing more to address climate change. Studies reveal that members of Congress and Congressional staffer consistently underestimate the level of their own constituents’ support for climate action.
• Polling shows that a majority of people in every Congressional district in the country support putting a price on carbon, especially as a revenue-neutral tax. There is also strong bipartisan consensus in the United States around investing in a clean energy transition, even in oil and coal territory.
• Americans are increasingly convinced that global warming is happening, human-caused, and a serious problem, and they increasingly understand that climate impacts are here and now, not far in time and space.

 

Cary Funk, Director, Science and Society Research, Pew Research Center

• U.S. adults have different policy priorities for the president and Congress depending on whether they identify as a Republican or Democrat. In a survey of U.S. adults conducted in 2023, climate policy was a top priority for 13 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats. While a majority of Democrats cite climate policy as a top priority, it is one of the many issues they care about, so the challenge for policy-making is whether this issue rises to the top.
• There are areas of bipartisan agreement when it comes to climate policy and proposals, often lining up with proposals that Republican leaders have proposed. For example, 79 percent of U.S. adults support providing a tax credit to businesses for developing carbon-capture and storage technology. Ninety percent of U.S. adults support planting about a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions.
• Younger Republicans are more supportive of a range of policies to reduce the effects of climate change. For example, 58 percent of Republicans under 30 support providing incentives to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles while only 35 percent of Republicans over 65 support this same proposal.
• Republicans and Democrats have different priorities when evaluating climate policies. A 2021 survey showed that 65 percent of Republicans say increasing jobs and economic growth is very important to them when thinking about proposals to reduce the effects of climate change, with a similar share saying that keeping consumer costs low was important to them. This differs from Democrats, 79 percent of whom say protecting the environment for future generations is very important to them.
• A majority of U.S adults support the United States taking steps to be carbon neutral by 2050, but two-thirds want to keep a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources. There are also internal differences in both party coalitions over energy policies.
• In a survey conducted in 2022, 66 percent of moderate Republicans are in favor of the United States taking steps to be carbon neutral by 2050, but 64 percent of conservative Republicans oppose the idea. There are similar tensions within the Democratic party on completely phasing out the use of fossil fuels. Sixty-three percent of liberal Democrats are in favor of completely phasing out fossil fuels, but 61 percent of moderate Democrats think the United States should use a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy.
• Regardless of political affiliation, older Americans are less supportive of completely phasing out fossil fuels than younger Americans.
• As recently as 2019, there was bipartisan agreement that environmental laws and regulations were worth the cost. In 2021 and 2022, there was a significant shift among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, with more people saying that regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.
• Democrats expect positive impacts from a transition to more renewable energy in the United States, with 81 percent of Democrats saying it will increase air and water quality and 73 percent saying it will increase job opportunities in the energy sector. Republicans are more unclear about whether these policies would lead to environmental benefits and are worried about increased economic costs. Sixty-one percent of Republicans say transitioning to renewable energy will increase consumer prices.

 

Jonathon Schuldt, Executive Director, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research; Associate Professor of Communications, Cornell University

• Americans' perception of climate change as a serious, imminent threat increased by 14 percent between 2021 and 2022. People increasingly think that the seriousness of global warming is underestimated and that the government is doing too little to address the issue.
• Climate change disproportionately affects some groups more than others, specifically groups that are already disadvantaged by existing social and economic systems. In the United States, communities of color, Indigenous communities, and other socially disadvantaged groups are at higher risk of being impacted by environmental hazards and are less equipped to deal with the impacts of climate change.
• Black and Hispanic/Latino residents report being more concerned about climate change. The views reported by Black and Hispanic/Latino residents are less tied to politics, with over half of conservative Black and Hispanic/Latino residents saying that global warming is happening and that the United States should regulate fossil fuels and coal power plants.
• In a 2022 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, just over 60 percent of registered voters said that climate change would be somewhat or very important to their vote in the midterm election. Hispanic/Latino, Black, and low-income respondents reported higher levels of climate change being somewhat or very important to their vote. When the survey was run for a second time with a sample of Black registered voters, over 80 percent of Black voters said climate change is somewhat or very important to their vote.
• While Hispanic/Latino and low-income Americans are among the groups most concerned about climate change, they are perceived to be among the least concerned groups.
• Among Americans, there is low recognition of the unequal impacts of climate change across groups in the United States. While race and class are some of the strongest risk factors when it comes to exposure to environmental hazards, 57 percent of Americans believe all Americans suffer the consequences of pollution and environmental contamination equally.

 

Neela Banerjee, Deputy Senior Supervising Climate Editor, National Public Radio (NPR)

• NPR’s polling has focused on personal experience. In 2021, NPR partnered with Harvard University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine the impact of extreme weather on Americans’ finances, health, and choices of places to live. This study, which polled a representative group of 2,500 Americans in both English and Spanish, revealed that over the last five years, more than 75 percent of Americans said they had been affected by extreme weather. Fifty-one percent of respondents reported being impacted by extreme heat, 45 percent by abnormally severe winter storms, and the remainder by drought, hurricanes, and tropical storms.
• Respondents who had experienced an extreme weather event in the past five years were more than twice as likely to see climate change as a crisis or major problem.
• About 17 percent of people impacted by severe weather events reported serious financial hardship as a consequence, and 70 percent were uninsured or underinsured for their losses. Americans do not expect climate disasters to hit them, so they are not prepared for them.
• People with the fewest resources in the United States are also the ones hit hardest by extreme weather. For instance, Native Americans are much more likely to have long-lasting financial problems. Almost half of Native Americans impacted by extreme weather events reported serious financial consequences within their household, which is four times the rate of white Americans. Black Americans experience financial hardship three times as frequently, and Latinos see these consequences twice as often as white Americans.
• Sixty-four percent of Americans who have experienced extreme weather support increasing grid resilience, even if electricity prices go up (versus 47 percent of those who have not experienced extreme weather); 82 percent support the federal government requiring carbon emission reductions (as opposed to 63 percent of those who have not); and 63 percent support state government spending for greater disaster preparedness, even if it raises taxes (versus 39 percent of those who have not).
• For the 2022 election cycle, 30 percent of voters said they were ‘very likely’ to vote for a candidate who favored major government action to limit climate change.

 

Q&A

 

Q: To what extent does a person’s view on climate change drive their vote in an election? How would one explain a Texas Hispanic population that is increasingly climate-concerned yet voted for Republicans more in 2020 than in 2016?

Leiserowitz

• The answer somewhat depends on the individual’s party. As a voting priority, climate change has soared among liberal Democrats, which has had huge consequences in the primary process. In the 2020 presidential election, every candidate for the Democratic nomination had a climate plan.
• Biden’s campaign was unusual, in the context of past Democratic party nominees, because his climate plan got stronger after winning the nomination. This likely was an effort to mobilize that climate-prioritizing base to show up to polls in higher proportions than their skeptical counterparts.

Funk

• After more than 20 years of polarization, political processes have changed in a way that disincentivizes moving to the center. The typical Republican is now further apart from the typical Democrat.
• Latinos and Hispanics are a little more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to say they care about climate issues, yet still exhibit voting behavior that is not exclusively driven by climate change.

 

Q: What caused the dramatic drop in climate belief in 2010?

Banerjee

• In 2009, a series of emails from climate scientists were stolen, leaked out of context, and packaged to try to discredit the mainstream science of climate change in the lead up to and during the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Excerpts from the “climategate” emails, taken out of context, suggested that the scientists cooked the data, even though rigorous subsequent review has shown that nothing untoward happened and all of the research had been appropriately peer reviewed.
• However, this impacted public perception of climate change.

Leiserowitz

• In the 2008 election, then-Republican presidential nominee John McCain was one of the champions of climate action in the United States. Part of his national platform for the Republican Party was that climate change was real, human-caused, and a serious problem. He discussed how to address climate change with conservative principles. There was so much basic agreement between him and then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on climate change that they did not even debate the subject during the campaign.
• When Barack Obama won the election, he decided to adopt the Republican policy idea of a cap-and-trade system, which was conceptualized during the Ronald Reagan Administration and implemented by George H.W. Bush to effectively address acid rain. In response, Republican policymakers decided to demonize one of their very best ideas. In 18 months, the party line changed to ‘climate change is a hoax.’

 

Q: What else can be done in the nongovernmental organization space to advance climate action?

Funk

• COVID-19 and the corresponding emergency took some of the urgency away from climate change in the view of most government officials and legislators. Time is needed to regain that momentum.

Leiserowitz

• The evolving climate system, and the corresponding terrible impacts of weather events, give no consideration to whether someone is a Republican or Democrat. One of the biggest things to do is try to depoliticize the issue as quickly as possible.

Banerjee

• In comparing climate change to past policy issues that were met with skepticism, one difference is clear: you can choose not to smoke and improve your personal health. You cannot choose to just run your car on something other than fossil fuels, if you do not own an electric vehicle. The need for systemic change adds a whole new dimension to addressing climate change.
• When individuals whose political identities are tied to denying mainstream science on climate change experience extreme weather, it can be difficult for them to separate from their political beliefs and attribute these events to climate change. In deep-red parts of the country that have experienced disaster—such as the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael and Nebraska after the recent flooding—NPR reporters found that the tendency was to view these events as part of a normal pattern of natural processes. So as a society, and especially within the media, it is important to more explicitly make these connections between weather-related suffering and big picture climate change.

Leiserowitz

• It is not enough to experience an extreme event—those events have to be interpreted. It is up to media leaders, business leaders, and political leaders to help people connect those dots.

 

Q: How important is it to tell stories of optimism or solutions in climate coverage?

Banerjee

• NPR just hired a climate solutions reporter with the goal of bringing a sophisticated understanding of such solutions. It is not helpful to give false hope, but, at the same time, it is critical that people understand there are ways to cope. When reporters write about problems, the goal is to also write about a solution that can be part of addressing the problem.

Schuldt

• Folks in communication frequently ask, what are the magic words we can say to get people to take climate action? Fundamentally, they do not exist. However, decades of communication theory suggest that solutions have to be combined with emotions. You have to tell people what they can do about the problem at hand with the hope or fear they have been instilled with.

Funk

• People need to be able to see a path forward. Pessimism is not a motivator for change.

Leiserowitz

• One of the best ways to build a sense of efficacy is through storytelling. Lift up the voices of those who are taking action. Let people hear about others taking action who look like them, share their values, and come from their communities.

 

Q: Can economic prosperity and environmental justice co-exist as priorities or will that always be a cause of division?

Funk

• When talking about economic costs, people tend to consider “my pocketbook” or “the average American,” rather than big-picture implications for groups in society or the productivity of a patch of land, for example. The best way to address this is to view environmental challenges in light of the impact on communities, rather than individuals.

Banerjee

• Framing these two ideas as totally opposed is a false dichotomy. There are tensions, but we cannot overlook the billions of dollars of economic activity that are lost to extreme weather events. This is a question that should be highlighted, alongside the consideration of who precisely is suffering.
• For example, as rivers dry up in Germany, it is going to be more expensive to move goods that feed into the international supply chain. There are real, dramatic, long-term economic effects of not addressing climate change, but they tend to be overlooked.

Leiserowitz

• There are also potentially trillions of dollars to be made in the clean energy transition.

Bresette

• Since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, the pollutants regulated by the legislation have been reduced by 80 percent, and the U.S. economy has grown by 216 times.

 

Q: How do Americans perceive nuclear energy and next-generation nuclear energy technology?

Leiserowitz

• Americans have long seen nuclear as a rather unsafe technology because of extremely memorable events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. But that is beginning to change. These events are farther in the rearview mirror, and environmentalists have had to rethink their stance, which used to be widely anti-nuclear, as they evaluate the most feasible solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear energy is a significant low-emissions power source.
• There is lots of NIMBY-ism around nuclear energy in the United States. Americans say we should have more nuclear energy, just “not in my backyard.”

 

Compiled by Tyler Burkhardt and Madeline Dawson and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.