Issue: Climate Impacts

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling about fossil fuel accountability, publicly owned utilities, and frontline communities’ vulnerability to extreme weather.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including a new Pew report on Americans’ climate attitudes, a new analysis of pro-climate Republicans, and new polling on President Biden’s investments in clean energy and infrastructure.

Americans widely agree that climate change is harming people in the U.S. today and expect climate impacts to get worse in the future. Most trust that climate scientists understand the problem, despite doubts among Republicans. 75% of Americans recognize that human activity is contributing at least “some” to climate change. 71% of Americans agree that climate change is causing at least “some” harm to people in the U.S. today. 56% of Americans rate climate change as an “extremely” or “very” serious problem. 65% of Americans believe that climate scientists understand how climate change affects extreme weather events “very” or “fairly” well. 63% of Americans believe that climate scientists understand the causes of climate change “very” or “fairly” well.