Polling Shows Growing Climate Concern Among Americans. But Outsized Influence of Deniers Remains a Roadblock

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More Americans than ever before โ€” 54 percent, recent polling data shows โ€” are alarmed or concerned about climate change, which scientists warn is a planetary emergency unfolding in the form of searing heat, prolonged drought, massive wildfires, monstrous storms, and otherย extremes.

These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental globalย challenge.

Weather Extremes Drivingย Climateย Concern

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has already seen 16 billion-dollar weather disasters this year, including horrific fires in the West and powerful storms like Hurricanes Sally,ย Laura, and Delta onย the Gulfย Coast.

This reality of intensifying climate disasters in part helps explain the rise in concern on this issue among the American public, says Ed Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Maibach is part of a research team that since 2008 has surveyed and categorized American attitudes on climate change into six different groups that they call theย โ€œSix Americas.โ€

The latest update to this research based on polling done in April this year found that Americans who fall into the โ€œalarmedโ€ category outnumber those who dismiss the climate problem nearly 4 to 1. This โ€œAlarmedโ€ group now represents 26 percent of the public, while the group at the far opposite end of the spectrum, those hard-core climate science deniers who researchers categorize as โ€œDismissive,โ€ are roughly 7 percent of the U.S. population. The sizes of these two polar opposite groups have shifted significantly in just the last five years, with the โ€œAlarmedโ€ category more than doubling (up from 11 percentย in 2015) and the Dismissive category declining by nearly half (down from 12 percentย inย 2015).

โ€œOverall, Americans are becoming more worried about global warming, more engaged with the issue, and more supportive of climate solutions,โ€ Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which leads the โ€œSix Americasโ€ research, said in an email describing the updated polling numbers.

Despite this growing awareness of the climate problem among the public, Americans who fall into the Dismissive category continue to have outsized influence in the public discourse, especially on the politicalย right.

โ€œHowever, because conservative media organizations prominently feature Dismissive politicians, pundits, and industry officials, most Americans overestimate the prevalence of Dismissive beliefs among other Americans,โ€ Leiserowitz explained by email.

The โ€œDismissiveโ€ viewpoint is not only overrepresented in conservative media, but it has infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government, particularly under the Trump administration and among many Republican lawmakers. It has become part of the conservative orthodoxy to question humanย influence on the climate and downplay the seriousness of theย threat.

The 2020 Republican National Convention failed to acknowledge the climate crisis, for example, and conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett raised alarm bells with her dismissive comments on the issue during her Senate confirmation hearing last week. In follow-up questioning from Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee released this week, Barrett refused to answer straightforward questions about climate science, instead responding that โ€œthe Supreme Court has described โ€˜climate changeโ€™ as a โ€˜controversialย subject.โ€™โ€

The science of climate change is not controversial, however. As climate scientist Michael Mann said during a recent interview that aired on CBSโ€™s 60 Minutes, โ€œThere’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is aboutย gravity.โ€

How is it, then, that climate science denial remains so influential in America even when the โ€œDismissiveโ€ group represents less than 10 percent of theย population?

One explanation is the role of right-wing media echoing climate science denial talking points and disseminatingย disinformation.

โ€œThereโ€™s no question that Fox News punches way above its weight in terms of spreading disinformation and keeping doubt alive among the public,โ€ Maibach told DeSmog in anย interview.

Another big factor, he added, particularly when it comes to Republicans in Congress, is the money pouring into election campaigns from vested interests opposed to climateย policies.

โ€œAmericans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothersโ€™ network, dark money interests, they are absolutely willing to fund extremely conservative Republican candidates who are toeing their economically self-interested line that either climate change isnโ€™t real or itโ€™s not human-caused or itโ€™s not very serious anyway,โ€ Maibachย said.

โ€œThereโ€™s no question that the unholy alliance between the fossil fuel industry and conservative news outlets and conservative politicians has allowed the deferral of American society dealing with this issue for 30 or more years,โ€ heย added.

America Misled by Bigย Oil

The fossil fuel industry in particular not only funds politicians who refuse to take climate action seriously, but has spent decades distorting the publicโ€™s understanding of the climate threat in order to stave off policy responses and preserve the industryโ€™s businessย model.

An influentialย 2017 study from Harvard researchers Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran examined 40 years of both private and public communications on climate change from ExxonMobil, finding that the more public-facing the materials were, the more they expressed doubts about theย science.

The study concluded that Exxon misled the public, but it doesnโ€™t stop there. An ExxonMobil executiveย recently published an attempt to discredit their original study. According toย new commentaryย from Oreskes and Supran whichย respondsย to that executive’s critiques, the oil companyโ€™s attempt to smear their peer-reviewed research further demonstrates its disingenuousย behavior.

โ€œExxonMobil is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public,โ€ Oreskes and Supran argueย in the Guardian on Octoberย 16.

They, along with Maibach and two other colleagues, called out the fossil fuel industryโ€™s deliberate efforts to mislead Americans on climate change in a report published last year. This โ€œAmerica Misledโ€ report explained that companies like ExxonMobil โ€œpolluted the information landscapeโ€ and spent โ€œhundreds of millions of dollars confusing the public and delaying life-savingย action.โ€

As Supran told DeSmog, fossil fuel companies have worked alongside conservative voices in media, think tanks, and politics to amplify both anti-regulatory ideology and distrust in science in the publicย sphere.

โ€œOne of the most pernicious consequences of decades of anti-science, anti-policy climate denial and delay by fossil fuel interests, conservative billionaires, and their networks of think tanks and allies in politics and media has been that it has fomented public distrust in fundamental institutions like science, journalism, and government, and that this has mutually reinforced libertarian, anti-regulatory ideologies,โ€ Supran said via email. โ€œYou can see the ramifications playing out all around us, from a climate-denying President,ย to paltry and patchwork climate policies,ย to a public and media only just beginning to wake up at the eleventh hour as our climate collapses around us. This war on science and truth has cost us decades and committed us to irreversible globalย heating.โ€

He said the fossil fuel industryโ€™s attempts to delay climate action are ongoing. Even though most companies have pivoted away from outright climate change denial, they continue to mislead the public in more nuancedย ways.

โ€œWhat we are now seeing is a broad rhetorical shift by the fossil fuel regime towards more subtle and subversive tactics for delaying climate policies: a combination of misleading public relations and backroom lobbying that greenwash the industryโ€™s image while undermining meaningful action,โ€ Supran said. โ€œBut it’s denial by any other name. Because although the rhetoric and tactics have evolved, the goal โ€” and the result so far โ€” remains the same:ย inaction.โ€

Climate a Voting Issue inย 2020

Despite this ongoing influence of climate science denial and disinformation, public opinion overall in America is shifting towards understanding that climate change is happening, is dangerous, and must beย addressed.

โ€œThe public is increasingly waking up to the realities of climate change, and they are increasingly connecting the realities of climate change to their political choices,โ€ Maibachย said.

Public opinion polling from Maibach and colleagues over the last year shows that more thanย 40 percent of registered voters say global warming will be a โ€œvery importantโ€ issue they consider in the 2020 presidential election. This trend is consistent with results of other recent polling.

Furthermore, according to public opinion polling conducted this year by researchers at Stanford University and the nonprofit Resources for the Future,ย the climate change โ€œissue public,โ€ or group of Americans most concerned about and engaged on this issue, is at the highest level yet at 25 percent.ย That number is consistent with the size of the โ€œAlarmedโ€ category per the Yale Project on Climate Change Communicationโ€™s polling thisย year.

โ€œIn 2020, the global warming issue public made up an all-time high of 25 percentย of Americans, up from 9 percentย in 1997, showing that a growing body of people care deeply about climate change and may be likely to cast their votes based on candidatesโ€™ climate policy platforms,โ€ the Stanford and Resources For the Future research report explains.

As Maibach put it, โ€œClimate change was on the ballot in the 2020 primary season, and it is still on the ballot in the 2020 generalย election.โ€

Main image: Sign at the Climate Strike NYC, on September 20, 2019 in Battery Park. Credit:ย Pamela Drew,ย CC BYNCย 2.0

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Dana is an environmental journalist focusing on climate change and climate accountability reporting. She writes regularly for DeSmog covering topics such as fossil fuel industry opposition to climate action, climate change lawsuits, greenwashing and false climate solutions, and clean transportation.

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