Resource Type: Research & Articles

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new poll releases from Gallup about Americans’ environmental concerns and the impacts of extreme weather experiences on people’s climate views, and a new poll of voters’ attitudes about fossil fuels and clean energy in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

One in three Americans say they have personally been affected by an extreme weather event since 2020. A recent Gallup poll found this, reflecting a period that included a paralyzing ice storm in Texas, one of the largest wildfires in California’s history and a powerful storm that killed dozens of people in the New York region. The most common answer given about specific type of extreme weather was extreme cold. People in the South and West said they were most likely to have experienced extreme heat. Beliefs about climate change were linked with claims about being affected by extreme weather: 63% of those who had been affected by extreme weather said they worried “a great deal” about global warming, compared with 33% who had not been affected by extreme weather. In 2021, climate disasters caused a combined $145 billion in damages and at least 688 deaths, according to NOAA. This survey was conducted in March 2022 of 1,000 Americans living in all 50 states.