Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

Americans Remain Extremely Concerned About Climate Change, Heatmap Poll Finds

Seventy percent of Americans call it a serious problem.

A poll and clean energy.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Americans remain immensely concerned about climate change, with 70% calling it a serious problem and over one in three saying they are extremely concerned about the issue, Heatmap’s second Climate Poll has found, echoing results from its first survey last winter.

Conducted in mid-November by Benenson Strategy Group, the second poll explored both how Americans’ perceptions of climate change have shifted since Heatmap’s inaugural survey in February and also expanded to touch on questions about individuals’ personal experiences with climate change, their concerns about the future, their knowledge about climate issues and their attitudes on solutions, and how the issue is factoring into their 2024 presidential election decisions.

Encouragingly, the vast majority of Americans (68%) agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is a result of human activity, including almost half (48%) of Republicans and many (44%) former Trump voters.


However, most people do not think that things are moving in the right direction: 46% of respondents said they are “increasingly pessimistic” about climate change, while only a quarter said they think things are looking up.

While extreme heat, historic smoke, flooding, rapidly intensifying hurricanes, and the deadliest wildfire in modern history made headlines throughout 2023, Americans reported a slight decline from last winter in their feelings of being personally affected by climate change: 44% said they were “very” or “somewhat” affected, down 6 points since the Heatmap Climate Poll was last conducted 10 months ago. The highest numbers came from respondents in the West, about half (49%) of whom said they’d experienced climate change personally, and the lowest numbers were in the Midwest, with 37% who said they’d been affected.

However, that has not affected Americans’ sense of urgency or concern about future weather impacts on their communities. Of the extreme weather scenarios that Heatmap asked about — tornadoes, extreme thunderstorms, hurricanes, wildfires, drought, flooding, extreme heat, and blizzards — a majority of Americans said they had concerns about the climate impacting the place they live. The lowest level of reported anxiety was over hurricanes (57%), which makes sense given that the impacts are heavily (albeit, sometimes surprisingly) regional.

These concerns played into Americans’ thoughts about the future more generally as well. Nearly three-quarters of parents (72%) reported having high levels of concern about the climate, with dads slightly more worried (77%) than moms (68%).

More than one in 10 Americans (12%) are worried that insurance companies are leaving their area. Almost one in five Americans (19%) say they’ve already seen their insurance rates increase due to weather extremes, and eight in 10 Americans say they want the government to require insurance companies to continue offering insurance in areas that are affected by climate change.

Most respondents said they are taking personal action on some level, whether it’s recycling (70%), carrying a reusable water bottle (62%), or driving or hoping to drive an EV in the future (46%). Even among people who voted in 2020 for Trump — no fan of electric vehicles — 30% said they drive or would like to drive an electric car in the future.

When it comes to solutions, though, Americans are more divided on the best approach. There’s uncertainty around the green energy transition, with 38% of respondents worried it will cost them money, 35% believing it will save them money, and 27% unsure. Proposals like providing tax incentives to make homes more energy efficient; making it easier to build new solar plants; investing in public transportation; and funding scientific studies to explore ways of reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere are widely popular, though, with all receiving over 80% support by respondents.

However, Americans who currently drive, or are interested in buying, an EV largely said that fuel savings (73%) were a bigger incentive to them than the benefits for the climate (63%). Starkly, Americans are also not sold on the phase-out of fossil fuels: 62% said they support making it easier to drill and build new pipelines, including 51% of Democrats and 59% of Independents.


What does the picture painted by the Heatmap poll mean for the 2024 election? There is a clear bipartisan interest in climate change, with 68% of Americans saying a candidate’s position on climate change is important in determining their presidential vote, including 86% of Democrats, 53% of Republicans, and 62% of Independents. Additionally, nearly one in seven (69%) Americans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that led an initiative to plant millions of trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere — a popular, albeit dubious, Republican climate proposal that 80% of Democrats said they could get behind.

Heatmap will continue to offer further analysis of the survey’s results in the coming days, including closer looks at Americans’ understandings of climate lingo, how they are influenced by common land development arguments, and more.

The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Nov. 6 to 13, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

  • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
  • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
  • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
  • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
  • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
  • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow