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Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.
In most parts of the country, the truth has been inescapable this summer. As the U.S. suffers through heat waves, wildfires and droughts, climate change feels right at our doorstep (and for those of us without air conditioning, doubly so). While climate change is not solely responsible for these harsh weather conditions, it has made them more frequent and more severe. And Americans say they are feeling it.
A majority of Americans — 71 percent — said their local community has endured at least one of five forms of extreme weather over the last year: heat, flooding, drought, wildfires or rising sea levels, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center conducted in May. And regardless of the type experienced, a majority of those who had faced such weather said climate change played a role. This is true even among Republicans, who are generally less likely to believe climate change is happening. For Republicans who said their local community had experienced extreme heat, for example, 79 percent said climate change contributed a lot or a little, while 21 percent said climate change did not contribute at all.
Whether or not they’ve experienced it firsthand, most Americans are worried about climate change. In a Morning Consult poll from July, 73 percent of Americans said they were at least somewhat concerned about climate change, including 39 percent who said they were very concerned. However, in this case, public opinion is split along partisan lines. While 91 percent of Democrats said they were very or somewhat concerned about climate change, fewer than half — 47 percent — of Republicans said the same.
Clearly, many Americans are feeling the heat and understand its causes. But what are they willing to do about it? Well, many are taking matters into their own hands and trying to make more climate-friendly choices in their personal lives. In that Morning Consult poll, 61 percent of Americans said they had changed their behavior “some” or “a lot” because of concerns about the environment. Democrats and younger Americans were more likely to say they’d changed their behavior. Sixty-six percent of Gen Z respondents said they’d changed behavior, compared with 60 percent of baby boomers and 59 percent of Gen Xers. Fewer than half of all respondents said that they stay away from single-use packaging or that they buy items with limited to no packaging. But most Americans said they recycle, use refillable water bottles, restrict their use of plastics and buy items made of recyclable materials because of concerns over the environment.
Yet, while they’re willing to make these small changes, many Americans are pessimistic about how much impact individual climate-conscious decisions actually have. Just 52 percent of Americans said their actions have an effect on climate change, according to an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in June. That’s down from 66 percent in 2019. And when asked who has “a great deal” or “a lot” of responsibility for addressing climate change, 45 percent of Americans said individual people did. In comparison, 63 percent said the federal government did.
And there’s substantial agreement among Americans over what the federal government can and should do to address climate change, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this month. A majority of Americans supported measures such as incentives to lower the cost of renewable energy and using government funds to promote oil and gas companies to reduce emissions. These policies are popular even among Republicans: 53 percent of Republicans supported the cost-lowering incentives and 50 percent supported funding to lower emissions from oil and gas companies.
Funnily enough, the f …