Americans are starting to care about climate change, but does it matter?
With less than 40 days until the United States presidential election, orgs are trying to figure out what matters to voters in November. And more than ever, climate change is at the top of voters’ minds.
A Guardian/VICE poll out Wednesday finds that seven in 10 American voters favor government climate action, with a further seven in 10 voters supporting U.S. involvement in the Paris climate accord — the international agreement that aims to keep global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
This despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans and tanked the economy. In fact, many voters actually see COVID-19 as an opportunity for climate action. About two-thirds of voters support a multi-trillion-dollar federal recovery package that prioritizes clean and renewable energy infrastructure, as well as a carbon tax to generate revenue for the stimulus.
So far, however, U.S. politicians have failed to get this message. None of the $2 trillion stimulus package passed in March went toward fighting climate change. House Democrats did try to include green provisions early on, but those provisions were stripped when President Donald Trump threatened to veto.
But Trump, who has repeatedly questioned climate science, isn’t the only problem. The Republican Party has historically ignored or denied the climate crisis altogether. And up against a wall of scientific consensus and increasing climate disasters, these GOP lawmakers have fallen back on a common refrain: Climate policy is too expensive.
Another poll out this week, however, shows that voters no longer agree with this argument. The poll — which came from Stanford University, Resources for the Future (RFF), and ReconMR — finds that only 29% think that climate policy will hurt the economy, while nearly half think addressing climate change will actually help it.
“The argument that we can’t do anything about climate change without crashing the economy, or that we need to just focus on the pandemic and not do anything on climate right now simply doesn’t resonate with Americans,” said Ray Kopp, RFF vice president for research and policy engagement, in a press release.
Both polls, however, mean little if other issues take priority for voters. People may vote based on a candidate’s stances on the economy, the Supreme Court, or immigration, all of which are more important to voters than climate change, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.
Or people may just vote strictly along party lines. As Axios writes, recent polling shows “an extremely durable party divide.”
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published late last week, for example, shows climate change as the top priority for Democrats, with 22% listing it as their most important issue. That sounds great at the surface, but dive deeper, and you find that only 1% of Republicans made that claim.
Fortunately, there is a silver lining: independents.
“The most impact of candidate statements in shaping election outcomes is among Independents,” the Stanford/RFF/ReconMR report reads. “And among them, the same pattern appears that appeared among all Americans: taking a green position helped [political candidates], and taking a not-green position hurt.”
The key to winning the election may be unlocking these independent voters. And the good news from the latest polls is that if more of these independents support climate action, more candidates that support climate action may be elected.
“This is the first election where climate change has featured heavily,” Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, told The Guardian. “It’s unlike anything we’ve seen in American politics before.”
Come November, we’ll see if this increased concern about climate translates into votes. Or if voters just fall back onto familiar partisan politics.
