RE: Noteworthy News
August 7, 2024 at 11:00 am
(This post was last modified: August 7, 2024 at 11:04 am by Angrboda.)
Quote:The research shows that the American public, perhaps uniquely among people in developed countries, is represented disproportionately by climate deniers. Although 23% of the entire US Congress is composed of those who dismiss the climate crisis, polls show the proportion of Americans who share this view is significantly smaller, by as much as half.
Even as a quarter of US lawmakers deny the climate crisis, the American public has been moving significantly in the other direction. Fewer than one in five people in the US reject the findings of climate science, according to various studies, with long-running polling by Yale University showing that those they class as “dismissive” stand at just 11%.
While this slice of the American public opinion has remained largely unchanged in recent years, a much larger, growing cohort is worried about the climate crisis following a string of record hot years and a parade of wildfires, storms and other climate-fueled events. More than half of Americans are now “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change, the Yale surveys find.
“The amount of people at each end of the spectrum – alarmed and dismissive – were essentially tied back in 2013 but today there are three alarmed people for every one dismissive, so there’s been a fundamental shift in how people see climate change in the US,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in climate public opinion at Yale.
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