In my previous piece I wrote about how climate change is not an existential crisis. In this piece I used data from an excellent paper “The Science vs. the Narrative vs. the Voters: Clarifying the Public Debate Around Energy and Climate” by Roger Pielke, Jr. and Ruy Teixeira of the American Enterprise institute(AEI). The paper is based on a survey of over 3,000 voters that was conducted for AEI by YouGov between September 20-26, 2024. I got a number of comments about this piece and responded to them here. A number of objections were raised, and some good points were made, which I acknowledged. But there were also comments that rather made my point about needing a new narrative. There were also a few comments I thought were unfair to the Ecoright and I addressed those.

On a hike at mission trails regional park – San Diego, CA – USA (Photo: iStock)

Here I want to provide further data about the need for a new narrative, again using data from this AEI survey and more detailed data not in the report which Dr. Ruy Teixeira kindly provided to me. As shown in Figure 9, 40% of Americans regard dealing with climate change as a top priority. To put this in perspective, the top five priorities are strengthening the nation’s economy (70%), fighting inflation (68%), defending the country from future terrorist attacks (63%), and taking steps to make the social security system financially sound (63%), and reducing health care costs (59%).

Another 28% view it as important but a lower priority while 18% see it as not important and 14% think nothing should be done about. So two-thirds of Americans think climate change is an important issue but it ranks 15^th in a list of 18 issues, ahead of dealing with drug addiction, addressing issues around race, and, in last place, dealing with global trade issues. I suspect that Trump’s tariffs have made that a higher priority which probably pushes climate change done a slot.

The Ideological Dimension of Climate Change

Looking at more detailed data there are no significant differences for families with or without children, full time or part-time employment, and income. There are modest differences with more women, college educated, and not married people seeing climate change as a priority. Young people (52% of 18-29) and black people (52% ) are more concerned.

But the most pronounced differences, no surprise, are along the political spectrum. Democrats are at 54%, Independents at 44%, and Republicans at a mere 14%. Those who see climate change as not something to be addressed are, respectively, 1%, 12%, and 27%. Similarly, in terms of professed ideology the numbers are 70% for Liberals, 40% for Moderates, 12% for Conservatives. The corresponding numbers for those who don’t see climate change as an issue are 1%, 8%, and 31%.

What clearly stands out are the low and high numbers for Republicans and Conservatives. There are a variety of explanations for this. One is that this group largely rejects the science of climate change. Another is that they believe technological solutions will solve the problem. A third is that they are reacting to what has become a liberal cause with a liberal narrative and they simply reject it for that reason.

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