This Earth Day, Voters Support Large-Scale Actions to Address Climate Change
By Grace Adcox
On Earth Day in 2023, surface temperatures will be more than 1 degree Celsius warmer than the global average across the twentieth century. By the 2030s, the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicts that this will surge to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in warming. With climate change at the forefront of President Biden’s agenda, Americans are increasingly aware of the issue and concerned about its impacts on their lives and livelihoods. But what really drives concerns about climate change, and do voters think that we are doing enough to tackle the climate crisis?
In a new national survey of likely voters conducted ahead of Earth Day, Data for Progress finds that voters worry most about climate change contributing to higher intensity extreme weather events and believe that creating new clean energy projects is one of the most important actions that the U.S. government can take to address climate change.
When asked which actors bear responsibility for addressing climate change, voters believe fossil fuel companies (52 percent) and large corporations (52 percent), along with other high-emitting countries like India and China (52 percent), share “a lot of responsibility” for addressing climate change. Voters also believe federal, state, and local lawmakers each have a strong responsibility to address climate change, with a plurality of all voters and more than half of Democrats saying each of these groups bear a lot of responsibility to act.
We consistently find that Americans are broadly concerned about climate change, but what causes this concern? Voters are most likely to list increasingly intense weather events, like floods and wildfires, as a top concern they have about climate change (39 percent), followed by potential global food shortages (36 percent) and increases in the cost of living (32 percent).
Pollution of the natural environment and the loss of plant and animal species both worry more than a quarter of voters (28 percent), while concerns about losing or being displaced from housing are relatively low among voters (11 percent), despite growing evidence of the potential threat of climate-induced displacement in the aftermath of extreme weather events.
To mitigate some of these concerns and address climate change, one-third of voters list investments in new clean energy projects, like wind and solar farms, as one of the most important actions the U.S. government could take to address climate change. Voters believe that planting new prairies and forests (26 percent), investing in emergent energy technologies (26 percent), and improving the efficiency of the electric grid (25 percent) are also important actions the federal government could take to address the climate crisis.
While climate “doomism” is the nom du jour describing the urgent anxiety many feel because of the threat of the climate crisis, this term does not quite capture the full extent of attitudes Americans have about climate change and its impact on the future. More than half of voters (59 percent) are occasionally or often angry about climate change, yet a majority (62 percent) say they occasionally or often experience optimism about the future.
To probe how recent climate legislation impacts attitudes on U.S. climate action, we randomly assigned voters into two groups. Half of respondents were asked a question assessing their attitudes on the actions the U.S. has taken so far to address climate change. The other half of respondents were asked the same question, but first read a short description of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), including its investments in clean energy, consumer tax credits for electric appliances, and carbon emission reduction components.
Nearly one-third of respondents who first read about the IRA (32 percent) say the U.S. is “on the right track” in taking meaningful action to address climate change, compared to only 26 percent of those who didn’t read about the law. However, a plurality of respondents in both groups say the U.S. has not done enough and needs to take drastic action to protect future generations (42 percent and 49 percent, respectively).
When thinking about approaches to mitigating climate change, a plurality of voters (44 percent), including a majority of Democrats (55 percent), believe that a combination of individual and large-scale actions is necessary to address climate change. Nearly one in five voters (19 percent) say the climate situation is so dire that individual actions are no longer enough to make a meaningful difference.
Voters also view U.S. action as critical in broader global efforts to address climate change. Smaller, poorer countries – especially island nations and nations in Sub-Saharan Africa – will suffer disproportionately from climate change. In contrast, wealthy, industrialized nations like the United States have contributed significantly more carbon emissions, while being better prepared to bear the impacts of climate change.
Most voters (66 percent) believe the United States has at least “some” responsibility to help smaller countries fight climate change using technical and financial assistance, including a strong majority of Democrats (86 percent) and Independents (64 percent), as well as a plurality of Republicans (47 percent). Among Democrats, nearly half (48 percent) believe the U.S. has a “lot” of responsibility to do so. Only 26 percent of voters believe the U.S. has no responsibility to help other countries fight climate change.
With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we have the foundational tools to begin addressing the climate crisis. It is critical that this federal funding is implemented in a way that maximizes our climate impact while elevating the voices of frontline communities that are disproportionately harmed by climate change. This Earth Day, we must build on this foundation to embark on our most impactful action yet and push for even bolder commitments to comprehensively address climate change.
Grace Adcox (@GraceAdcox) is a polling analyst at Data for Progress.