Climate Change in the American Mind: November 2019

Executive Summary

• About seven in ten Americans (72%) think global warming is happening. Only about one in eight Americans (12%) think global warming is not happening. Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it isn’t by a 6 to 1 ratio.
• About half of Americans are certain that global warming is happening; 52% are “extremely” or “very” sure it is happening. By contrast, far fewer (7%) are “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is not happening.
• About six in ten Americans (59%) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, three in ten (30%) think it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.
• More than half of Americans (55%) understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. However, only about one in five (22%) understand how strong the level of consensus among scientists is (i.e., that more than 90% of climate scientists think human-caused global warming is happening).
• Two in three Americans (66%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming. Three in ten (30%) are “very worried” about it.
• More than six in ten Americans (64%) say they feel at least “moderately interested” in global warming. About half say they feel “helpless” (53%) or “disgusted” (50%).
• Nearly half of Americans (46%) say they have personally experienced the effects of global warming.
• More than four in ten Americans (45%) think people in the United States are being harmed by global warming “right now.”
• More than four in ten Americans (43%) think they will be harmed by global warming, while more think their family (49%) will be harmed. Half or more Americans think global warming will harm people in their community (51%), people in the U.S. (65%), the world’s poor (66%), people in developing countries (68%),
  future generations of people (72%), and/or plant and animal species (73%).
• Two in three Americans (67%) say the issue of global warming is either “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” important to them personally, while one in three (33%) say it is either “not too” or “not at all” personally important.
• About six in ten Americans (59%) say they “rarely” or “never” discuss global warming with family and friends, while 41% say they do so “occasionally” or “often.”
• More than half of Americans (56%) say they hear about global warming in the media at least once a month and more than four in ten (44%) say they have seen more media coverage of global warming over the past year. Fewer (24%) say they hear people they know talking about global warming at least once a month.
• Fewer than half of Americans perceive a social norm in which their friends and family expect them to take action on global warming. Forty-three percent think it is at least moderately important to their family and
  friends that they take action (an injunctive norm), and four in ten (40%) say their family and friends make at
  least a moderate amount of effort to reduce global warming (a descriptive norm).
• Few Americans (12%) think it is too late to do anything about global warming, while two in three (66%) disagree that it is too late. About half of Americans (48%) think new technologies can solve global warming without individuals having to make big changes in their lives.
• More than six in ten Americans (64%) think global warming is affecting weather in the United States, and about three in ten think weather is being affected “a lot” (31%).
• Half or more Americans think global warming made several extreme weather-related events worse in 2019 including melting of the Greenland ice sheets (64%), European heat waves (55%), and California wildfires (50%).
• A majority of Americans are worried about harm from extreme events in their local area including extreme heat (64%), droughts (60%), flooding (58%), and/or water shortages (54%).
• A majority of Americans (56%) think extreme weather poses a risk to their community.

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This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: November 8 – 20, 2019. Interviews: 1,303 adults in the U.S. (18+). Average margin of error +/- 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The research was funded by the 11th Hour Project, the Energy Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. A special thank you goes to Parrish Bergquist, PhD and Matto Mildenberger, PhD for creating an automated version of this report.

Principal Investigators:

Anthony Leiserowitz, PhD
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
[email protected]

Edward Maibach, MPH, PhD
George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
[email protected]

Seth Rosenthal, PhD
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
[email protected]

John Kotcher, PhD
George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
[email protected]

Cite as:
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Bergquist, P., Ballew, M., Goldberg, M., & Gustafson, A. (2019). Climate Change in the American Mind: November 2019. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.