Essay by Eric Worrall
“… there are significant opportunities to connect climate action to other issues …”
CLIMATE NOTE · Sep 18, 2025
Top Public Worries in the U.S.
By Marija Verner, Jennifer Carman, Seth Rosenthal, Emily Goddard, Matthew Goldberg, Eric Scheuch, Edward Maibach, John Kotcher and Anthony Leiserowitz
Filed under: Audiences and Beliefs & Attitudes
Climate change connects directly to many other social issues such as the cost of living, the economy, health, disruption of government services, and national security. Understanding how Americans prioritize these other issues can provide valuable insights for climate communicators.
In our Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) surveys, we routinely ask people how worried they are about global warming. In our most recent CCAM survey, conducted May 1-12, 2025, we also asked how worried they are about a number of other public issues.
Key takeaways:
- Government corruption is a top worry for Americans – a majority (54%) say they are very worried about it. The cost of living and the economy are also among the top concerns (48% and 47% say they are very worried).
- Under one-third of Americans (29%) say they are very worried about global warming.
- Among the Alarmed, top worries are global warming (92% say they are very worried), disruption of federal government services, and the state of democracy in the U.S. (82% say they are very worried about both). Meanwhile, top worries for the Concerned are the economy (56%), the cost of living (54%), and government corruption (53%).
…
Conclusion
Americans face a wide range of issues today, including rising costs of living, government corruption, immigration policy, democratic institutions, and climate change. These worries vary significantly by Global Warming’s Six Americas as well as political party and ideology, revealing both shared anxieties and deep divisions.
For climate communicators, these findings offer important strategic insights. While direct concern about global warming remains politically polarized, there are significant opportunities to connect climate action to other issues. Government corruption, the cost of living, and concerns about the economy rank as top worries across most political groups, suggesting that connecting climate change to these concerns could broaden appeal. For instance, communicating how climate action can reduce energy costs, create economic opportunities, or address concerns about government accountability and transparency in environmental policy could resonate across the political spectrum.
Read more: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/top-public-worries-in-the-u-s/
The issue of government corruption really stands out as a top concern, but this would be a difficult issue for climate advocates to leverage. It is green schemes which receive billions of dollars of questionable government stimulus funds.
I mean consider Solyndra. Nobody as far as I know has been accused of or convicted of corruption, but President Obama granting massive federal loan guarantees to a company connected to a generous democrat donor, a company which shortly afterwards went bankrupt, the optics were not good.
I don’t know what Obama did was corrupt – perhaps it was all just a big coincidence. But we all know, when billions of dollars of loosely regulated free federal green stimulus money is on offer, the corrupt are quick to try to capitalise on any opportunities.
Sometimes accusations of green corruption come from the most unlikely sources. When Trump hater Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs set out to make a documentary about green energy, they expected to find evidence of the big oil conspiracy holding back the renewable transition. Instead they found evidence of a very different conspiracy – and had the integrity to report what they found.
Of course, despite all too rare exposes like Planet of the Humans, most greens prefer to cling to comforting though false narratives that fossil fuel is the major corrupting influence. If fossil fuel had that kind of pull in US politics, the USA would never have turned their back on coal.
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Yes. You’re failing to terrorise people as you would like. Sorry, not sorry.
In other words, “Clima-Change™ is responsible for everything that happens!”
Reading between the lines from Yale Program on Climate Communication, the propaganda indoctrination will continue until total public compliance is achieved!
Trying to make sense of this table..
Most of the things Lib D’s seem most worried about are things that Lib D’s do or cause as a matter of habit.
Government corruption, forcing up the cost of living, destruction of the economy, undermining democracy, disruption of government services, cultural and social division.
All these are very much “Democrat” caused issues.
And if the Autopen years hadn’t let in so many illegal immigrants, they wouldn’t need to be rounded up and sent packing… so also a Democrat caused issue.
I would say the radical Democrats and their insane policies and delusional thinking are at the root of the problems in the United States. And this has been the case for decades.
Radical Democrats don’t live in the same world as the rest of us, and they screw up our world every time they have a chance to do so.
Radical Democrats are Poison to our society. Radical Democrats are all about tearing things down, not building things up.
Radical Democrats are a great danger to our way of life.
Radical democracy is a (probably KGB originated ) narrative that attempts to portray the status quo as corrupt and immoral in order to foster deep discontent in society.
Along with the equally foreign ‘radical conservative Christianity’ with ‘right to life’ etc. it has been the most successful of Russia’s policies.
Climate change is simply a part of it.
Any issue that can be used to trigger strong irrational emotional responses, – anger, and hatred preferred – is grist for the mill.
And if it can be used to justify destroying the enemies economy – like renewable energy – its is simply perfect.
Do you have any evidence that there even is a “radical conservative Christianity”, much less that it and the “right to life movement” are foreign to the US?
You say “radical” Democrats, but Democrats almost kept the Declaration of Independence being signed until references to the evil institution of slavery were removed. Later, Democrats (who controlled the South) fought a war to secede from the Union because they wished to keep that peculiar institution. Failing that, they founded, funded, and provided logistical and legal support to the KKK, a group that persecuted (often to the death) of Black, Jewish, and other minority groups until the 1960s. The Democratic National Party has always been a great danger to our way of life.
And always been closely related to ideas of a certain Austrian/German from the 1940s.
And then they turn around and use the words “Nazi” and “fascist” to describe conservatives.
Talk about butchering, or being ignorant of, the meaning of words. !!
Seems a strange way to divide the population. The breakdown for Democrats is Lib and Mod/Con
While Republicans are divided Lib/Mod and Con.
Good catch
How do they determine Lib/Mod/Con? Is it the opinion of the researcher? Or is it self reported.
In my experience, I have met precious few leftists who are willing to call themselves liberal. Most of them tell others that they are moderates. Some may even believe it.
Notice in the chart above, its the “Lib D” that is always the most “very worried” about the issues unless its crime and illegals.
Go figure.
there are significant opportunities to connect climate action to other issues. Government corruption, the cost of living, and concerns about the economy
Notice to the Alarmists:
Thanks for bringing these points to the fore, great discussion!
Ha 🙂
“Climate communicators” says it all to me.
They are trying to figure out how to brainwash people better, as their current efforts are not scaring enough people.
The late night political talk show segment was not enough to replace the power of the autopen presidency.
“The issue of government corruption really stands out as a top concern…”
I suggest a key problem with government is a properly functioning civil service. A white male heterosexual friend of mine could only get temp jobs in the National Park Service for decades- while far less competent people of color, or females, or people with trivial “handicaps”, etc. got the jobs.
In Wokeachusetts, the state government has no functioning civil service system. All hiring is political and politically correct. 100%! Most top jobs are female- especially environmental and climate related.
I see a lot of your ads on tv shows I stream.
Why are the vast majority of actors in the commercials black people?
Don’t black people represent a smaller % of the US population than Hispanic people?
And certainly a lot less than the White peoples?
Yes, the U.S. is only about 13% black, yet almost all ads are populated by black actors. That trend began about 20 years ago, starting as a push for diversity, then progressing into “eliminate white people”. Hispanic is an ethnicity rather than a separate race, but they are about 20% of the population, divided between “white Hispanic” and “black Hispanic”
I was briefing a Republican candidate for the state legislature yesterday as she prepared for a forum and greatly appreciated her reaching out. One question she was told to expect was what actions she would take or support to end climate change. My first suggestion was she simply challenge the premise and state there is so little measurable “climate change” that government actions are a waste of time and money and its wrong to limit energy choices. “Oh, no, I couldn’t say that!” Until the people are told the truth, at least by those political leaders who recognize the truth, and told the truth directly and forcefully, the lingering doubts fed by media hype, propaganda in the schools and misinformation will continue to dominate. Republican “me tooism” on climate catastrophe and thus the need to de-carbonize everything provides no contrast, stimulates no debate. The Trump Administration is clearly working from that premise, that there is no crisis, but still spends too little effort on communicating why — with the why being, there is no climate crisis to address. The Energy Department document from Koonin, Curry et. al. was very useful but far too technical for the general public.
Your second last sentence hits the nail fairly on the head.
But anyway, although there is plenty of wordage available, nothing will happen until the MSM start to cover that.
Leave it to the “researchers” at Yale University to not only miss the message, but to then also mislead everyone about the public’s level of concern over climate change.
According to Yale’s most recent Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) survey conducted by Yale (details available at https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/top-public-worries-in-the-u-s ), which is directly referenced in the above article, “Global Warming” ranks eighth among the “Top Public Worries in the US”.
It’s interesting that their poll described this issue as “global warming” instead of the more commonly used term “climate change” . . . but I digress.
In any event, one cannot find this relative ranking mentioned anywhere in the text from Yale quoted in the above article nor in the article at the URL giving the details of Yale’s latest CCAM (it’s only revealed indirectly by examining the graphics!) . . . instead, one finds just a bunch of various percentages thrown around in (intentionally?) confusing phrases.
Here’s a prime example taken from Yale’s publication and as likewise quoted in the above article . . . the last bullet under “Key takeaways:”,
“Among the Alarmed, top worries are global warming (92% say they are very worried), disruption of federal government services, and the state of democracy in the U.S. (82% say they are very worried about both).”
Now in the Yale article you have to read below this statement to discover that “the Alarmed” are a classified polling subgroup of just 26% of all those surveyed, and the fact that 92% of these “say they are very worried” should come as no surprise since being very worried is a prerequisite to be in the Alarmed subgroup!
You have to read even further down the Yale CCAM article to find that the average margin of error at the 95% confidence interval for “the Alarmed” is +/- 5.2 percentage points, so this group could be as small as just 21% of all those Yale surveyed.
In comparison to Yale’s spin, consider these facts: reputable, nation-wide polls of US voters over the last ten years consistently reveal that “climate change” does not appear amongst the top ten issues of most concern to voters. As examples:
— “climate change” placed #21 in an October 2024 Gallup poll survey of issues most important to voters leading into the 2024 Presidential election (https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-2024-presidential-vote.aspx )
— similarly, a year earlier and away from the impending Presidential election, “climate change” placed #17 in a January 2003 Pew Research poll of US adults (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/02/06/economy-remains-the-publics-top-policy-priority-covid-19-concerns-decline-again/pp_2023-02-06_political-priorities_00-01-png )
So, no Yale, even your own CCAM DOES NOT show the USA is “still” deeply divided on climate change . . . something like 75% of the population believes it ranks as eighth or lower in priority of the top worries in the US.
The intent is to help “climate communicators” do a better job of informing the public about the existential threat to the world. Yet the “climate communicators” can’t even communicate if it is “global warming” or “climate change”. Not a surprise that the general public remains relatively unconcerned.
Maybe the message should be that global warming results in climate change? Or that a measure of changing climate is global warming?
It has ben at least a decade since the Climate Change Community started beating the drum that all they needed for success was better communication to the general public. Here we are with yet another report on just what the right communication strategy. They can’t get their climate predictions / forecasts / projections right, and they can’t seem to get their communication projections right, either. Seems to be a recurring theme that is being communicated very well.
I didn’t know there were any mod/con Dems left. Is Yale using an outdated model and reporting template? How about a follow-up survey on concerns over science integrity, safety, pay to play news, and lawfare using children as climate pawns.
The technology is divided also. There are still many competent scientists that buy into the need to reduce CO2 emissions. When I point out that it is likely that current warming is due to over-successfully reducing sulfur (and other?) emissions, resulting in fewer clouds, lower albedo and continued warming out of the LIA, they say “Yes, but…”
But, thankfully, Babcock and Wilcox have a solution in their Bright Loop Technology.
https://www.babcock.com/assets/Uploads/BW-brochure-E101-3260-BrightLoop-for-H2-Steam-or-Syngas-Production.pdf
I asked Google AI which was the most economical route to hydrogen production (yes, yes, I know hydrogen is impractical as a fuel) of the two alternates, Sulfur-Iodine and BW Bright Loop, Google thought Bright Loop. And threw in the bonus that it allows efficient CO2 capture.
The Bandit in the Woodpile is natural gas. Google is afraid that the 80 or so SMR nuclear projects currently in the works will not have enough economy of scale to overcome the cheapness of fossil fuels, namely the tremendous quantities of NG used in the water-shift reaction to make syngas for Agricultural Ammonia, where your food prices originate.
Now, if Spring Valley Aquisition Corp II ($SVII) can extend their efforts to join up with Babcock and Wilcox we might really get somewhere. Or, perhaps, $HCMAU or some of the other 78….
[My English teacher in HS said “Never start a sentence with But…] Times have changed.
First, as to your statement:
I hope you realize how very few competent climate scientists, and how little objective data, support that hypothesis.
“Sulfur” emissions affect radiation exchange in Earth’s atmosphere only via the formation of sulfate aerosols. And in fact, human-originated sulfate aerosols—unlike greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere—are short-lived, lasting for only a few days to weeks before they are washed out by rain and other weather events. Removing human-originated sulfates does not create a new warming effect; it simply removes a short-term cooling effect that was masking some of the warming caused by persistent greenhouse gases and other parameters.
As to those who like to point out that sulfate emissions from volcanoes can cause atmospheric cooling that can last for a year or longer, this misses the fact that major volcanoes emit sulfates into the (dry) stratosphere, where they can persist for years, dispersing globally, whereas human sulfate emissions only enter the lower troposphere locally where they are subject to washout by precipitation before having any chance to disperse globally.
Also, the reduction of human-produced sulfur emissions is a recent phenomenon, as clearly shown in the attached graph (taken from https://visualizingenergy.org/global-anthropogenic-sulfur-dioxide-emissions-1750-2022 ), with significant cuts starting only around 1980 . . . in comparison the Little Ice Age (LIA) is typically dated to have occurred from 1300 to 1850 AD. Therefore,
—human emissions of sulfate aerosols only became significant starting around 1820 AD (around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) so such are not the cause of the global cooling associated with the LIA, and
— if rising human-originated sulfate aerosol levels were to indeed result in any significant amount of global cooling (and likewise decreasing levels to result in any significant additional apparent warming), then there should have been a documented period of decreased “global warming”, perhaps even a period of absolute global cooling, over the period of 1820 to 1980 followed by a period of increased “global warming” after 1980 . . . but the scientific data trending of global surfaces temperatures show no such variations (e.g., see the attached temperature anomaly graph extracted from https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-1 ).
Gosh . . . who knew?
Ooops . . .my bad. I accidentally downloaded the wrong attachment in my post above. Here is the one that shows how mankind’s production (and then reductions) in SO2 emissions have varied over time since the Industrial Revolution.
When the President openly accepts a jumbo jet as a personal bribe it is obvious that the government is corrupt and unashamed of that.
It rots from the head.
Not a personal bribe.. a gift to the DOD.
And it would have been diplomatically very rude to turn it down..
The gift was given without strings..
You have serious TDS, which leads to a total lack of understanding of the situation.
PS.. you do know the Statue of Liberty was a gift , don’t you !
So if the Trump government told the Qatar government to stick their jet, you’d be telling us all how raaacciiiisssttt the Trump govt is?
TDS is easily diagnosed you know, and it’s in epidemic presence all around the world.
connecting climate change to these concerns [government corruption, the cost of living, the economy] could broaden appeal
Why not connect it to Taylor Swift? She’s really popular. Or the Baby Shark video which has more than 16 billion views on YouTube. The message is: if you don’t eat bugs instead of beef, pork, and chicken, ride a bicycle instead of driving a car, throw away everything produced with fossil fuels (which is, well, everything) then you can’t listen to Baby Shark anymore. On second thought, it might induce people to eat more meat, drive massive SUVs, and consume even more conspicuously so they don’t ever have to hear Baby Shark again.
never seen it… sounds like I won’t bother looking, either.
Unless there has been a major change in global sentiment, climate change continues to rank as a relatively low priority item among this planet’s residents; and whether people were ever all that concerned about the issue was debatable. For awhile governments, the leftist media, bureaucrats, and green product pushers got away with some of their scare tactics, but those days are certainly over now
Get the government out of the energy and climate business and much of the government corruption would go away.
Not really. Corruption thrived due to an opportunity rich environment.
The last chart is best. A poll was conducted that asked how concerned people were about14 issues, then the results were color coded by political leaning. The blue-coded political leaners were “more concerned” about 12 of the 14 issues. The only rational conclusion is that blue-coded people worry (about those type of issues) a lot more than red-coded people. I wonder why?