Polls Show U.S. Still Split On Climate Change

For Earth Day, how Americans see climate change in 5 charts

Cary Funk and Brian Kennedy, April 19, 2019 (Pew Research)

A majority of U.S. adults (56%) say protecting the environment should be a top priority for the president and Congress, while a smaller share (44%) says the same about dealing with global climate change, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey…

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A majority of Americans see at least some effect of climate change where they live…[45%] pointed to changes in the weather, including increasing frequency of severe storms, droughts, floods and wildfires (45% of those asked cited this reason)…[67%] of Americans who live within 25 miles of a coastline (67%) say climate change is affecting their local community…

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[67%] of Americans (67%) said the federal government wasn’t doing enough to reduce the effects of global climate change…[66% of Democrats and center-left independents] said policies aimed at reducing climate change generally provide net benefits for the environment…[27% on the right agreed]…44% of Republicans said such policies make no difference…[and 28%] said they do more harm than good for the environment…[57% of Republicans] such policies hurt the economy…Democrats said climate policies either help (45%) or make no difference (39%) to the economy…

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Millennial Republicans were twice as likely as Republicans in the Baby Boomer or older generations to say the Earth is warming due to human activity (36% vs. 18%)…[Only] 43% of Millennial Republicans said they favored the increased use of coal mining, compared with 71% of Republicans in the Baby Boomer or older generations…Partisanship is a stronger factor in people’s beliefs about climate change than is their level of knowledge and understanding about science…” click here for more

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