Environmental Polling Roundup – January 12, 2024
HEADLINES
Yale + GMU – Steady majorities of Americans say that global warming is happening, caused by humans, and affecting the weather; if they could talk to global warming experts, Americans are particularly eager to learn about specific actions that countries like the U.S. can take to address the problem [Release, Full Report]
npj Climate Action – Meta-analysis shows that Republican partisans have been diverging from consensus views on climate change and environmental protection since the 1990s, while Democratic partisans have surged in support for climate and the environment since the mid-2010s [Open access article]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The public is more interested in hearing about climate solutions than science. Yale and GMU find that, if Americans could talk to a global warming expert, they would be most interested in learning what the U.S. and the world can do to reduce global warming. This is a marked difference from the last time that Yale and GMU asked this question in 2011, when Americans were most interested in asking how scientists know that global warming is happening and how it’s caused. Now that the American public widely accepts the reality of climate change, there is still some opportunity to convince climate skeptics but far more opportunity to mobilize the climate-conscious majority behind concrete solutions – especially when many pro-climate actions, such as shifting to less polluting energy sources, are popular even among those who are unconvinced about climate change.
- Democrats have never been more unified on the need for climate action than they are now. A meta-analysis published in npj Climate Action finds that recent partisan polarization on climate and environmental issues has been asymmetric, with Democrats shifting much more in favor of climate and the environment over the past decade than Republicans have shifted against these priorities. In particular, Democrats have surged in their prioritization of climate change since the mid-2010s and are increasingly unified in the belief that climate change should be a top priority for the country. In a presidential election year, this signals an unprecedented opportunity for the climate movement to exert pressure on candidates who are looking to court and turn out Democratic voters.
GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
- [Climate Change] 72% of Americans recognize that global warming is happening, while just 15% say that it isn’t [Yale + GMU]
- [Climate Change] Americans are twice as likely to say that global warming is caused mostly by humans (58%) than to say that global warming is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment (29%). [Yale + GMU]
- [Climate Change + Personal Action] 63% of Americans say that they feel a “personal sense of responsibility” to help reduce global warming [Yale + GMU]
- [Climate Change + Extreme Weather] 61% of Americans recognize that global warming is affecting weather in the United States [Yale + GMU]
FULL ROUNDUP
Yale + GMU – Steady majorities of Americans say that global warming is happening, caused by humans, and affecting the weather; if they could talk to global warming experts, Americans are particularly eager to learn about specific actions that countries like the U.S. can take to address the problem [Release, Full Report]
The latest report from Yale and George Mason’s long-running “Climate Change in the American Mind” study, based on interviews conducted in October 2023, finds that majorities continue to say that global warming is happening, human-caused, and impacting weather in the United States.
Overall, Americans’ core climate attitudes have generally held steady since the previous wave of the survey that was fielded in April 2023:
- 72% recognize that global warming is happening (-2 from April)
- 61% say that global warming is affecting weather in the United States (-4 from April)
- 58% say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities (-3 from April)
- 43% say that they have personally experienced the effects of global warming (-1 from April)
As we’ve seen in previous polling, Americans’ beliefs about the impacts of climate change on the weather vary by the type of weather. In particular, Americans perceive a more intuitive link between global warming and hot or dry weather events like extreme heat, wildfires, and droughts.
Here are the percentages who say that global warming is having at least “some” effect on various types of weather events and environmental problems:
- Extreme heat – 61%
- Wildfires – 58%
- Droughts – 57%
- Rising sea levels – 54%
- Air pollution – 53%
- Water shortages – 53%
- Flooding – 52%
- Tornadoes – 48%
- Reduced snow pack – 47%
- Agricultural pests and diseases – 45%
- Water pollution – 44%
- Electricity power outages – 42%
Yale and GMU also included an interesting set of questions that we haven’t seen elsewhere, asking Americans what they would want to ask a global warming expert if they had the opportunity to talk to one. In this scenario, large majorities of Americans say that they would want to hear from global warming experts about specific actions that nations like the United States can take to reduce global warming.
There is also great interest in learning more about the time scale to reduce global warming, the specific harms it will cause, and the evidence that it is caused by humans.
Here are the percentages who say that they would want to ask each of the following questions of a global warming expert:
- What can the nations of the world do to reduce global warming? – 74%
- What can the United States do to reduce global warming – 72%
- How do you know that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, not natural changes in the environment? – 70%
- Is there still time to reduce global warming, or is it too late? – 69%
- What harm will global warming cause? – 69%
- What can I do to reduce global warming? – 68%
- How do you know that global warming is happening? – 64%
- What causes global warming? – 64%
- When will global warming begin to harm people? – 63%
- How much would it cost the United States to reduce global warming? – 62%
- Will global warming harm people? – 58%
- Is global warming really happening? – 54%
- Is global warming a hoax? – 39%
Comparing these responses to the last time that Yale and GMU asked this set of questions in 2011 reveals an interesting pattern: as Americans have grown more accepting of the reality that global warming is happening, they have become less interested in questioning the science and more interested in understanding possible solutions.
Compared to the percentages who said that they would ask each of these questions in 2011, Americans are now less interested in asking if global warming is really happening (54%, -12 from 2011), if global warming is a hoax (39%, -12 from 2011), and how experts know that global warming is happening (64%, -11 from 2011),
By contrast, Americans have grown more interested in asking what the United States can do to reduce global warming (72%, +5 from 2011) and what the nations of the world can do to reduce global warming (74%, +4 from 2011)
npj Climate Action – Meta-analysis shows that Republican partisans have been diverging from consensus views on climate change and environmental protection since the 1990s, while Democratic partisans have surged in support for climate and the environment since the mid-2010s [Open access article]
This meta-analysis published in npj Climate Action indicates that partisan polarization on climate and the environment stretches back decades and is characterized by two distinct shifts at different times: a negative shift in Republican partisans’ attitudes about the environment and climate change starting in the 1990s, and a surge in Democratic partisans’ support for climate and the environment in the last decade.
Pulling from the open access article, with emphasis added in bold:
“We find that within the contemporary citizenry, the environmental and climate change beliefs and attitudes of Americans broadly exhibit symmetric patterns of polarisation. Across seven distinct measures, Democrats are currently more likely to have heightened environmental and climate change beliefs and attitudes (in comparison to the average American), which is mirrored by decreased likelihood to have environmental and climate change beliefs and attitudes within Republicans.
Yet, the historical patterning of how these attitudes and beliefs have become polarised differs by environmental and climate change constructs. For both sets of environmental and climate change attitudes, we find two distinct historical patterns of asymmetric polarisation: first substantial decreases in environmental and climate change attitudes within Republicans largely beginning in the early 1990s, and second, a more recent trend of heightened environmental and climate change within Democrats initiating in the mid-2010s. While, for climate change beliefs, we find evidence of symmetrical polarisation of attitudes, with partisans diverging in relatively equidistant historical patterns from the median beginning in the mid-1990s.
These findings support previous research further demonstrating that, beginning in the 1990s, Republicans became far less likely to believe in anthropogenic change, less likely to be concerned about climate change, and are less likely to support mitigating policies. Drawing upon related findings, we suggest that the hyper-polarisation amongst Republicans can, in some ways, be attributed to the aggressive and concerted efforts from conservative think tanks and sympathetic media figures. For example, in recent decades over $2 billion has been spent on climate change lobbying in the US, of which, the groups supporting renewable energy and environmental protection have been outspent by a ratio of more than 10:1 by those supporting transportation, electrical utilities and the fossil fuel industry.”
The finding that recent polarization on climate and the environment has been asymmetric, with positive shifts in Democratic support for climate and the environment since the 2010s outweighing any negative shifts among Republican partisans, is borne out in much of the tracking data we see.
Gallup, for example, found last year that Democrats (78%) are much more likely than Republicans (20%) to say that environmental protection should be given priority even if it comes with some risk of curbing economic growth. And while Democrats have shifted by 32 points toward the pro-environment position on this question since 2011 (from 46% to 78%), there has been essentially no change among Republicans over that period (from 19% to 20%).
Similarly, Yale and GMU have measured a large increase in the percentage of Democrats who say that global warming should be a “high” or “very high” priority for Congress over the past decade while Republicans’ prioritization of the issue has changed relatively little.
Related Resources
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