Essay by Eric Worrall
“… The 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change – Americans believe in climate change, worry about climate change and support action on climate change …”
US public still favours action on climate change despite Trump’s fossil fuel drive
Two-thirds of Americans say they are worried about climate but level of media coverage does not reflect this
Oliver Milman
Wed 17 Jun 2026 22.00 AESTUS political and media discourse has drifted away from the climate crisis amid a frontal assault by Donald Trump upon policies to limit global heating and the president’s pugnacious demands to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas.
Yet while elite attention on climate has waned, even among some previously vocal Democrats who have wound back on criticism of the fossil fuels that are overheating our planet, the American public remains concerned about the climate crisis and continues to favour action to deal with it, according to experts and polling.
“The 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change – Americans believe in climate change, worry about climate change and support action on climate change,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the climate communication program at Yale University. “That didn’t change before, during or after the election.”
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“Voting priorities haven’t changed much in terms of climate but other issues have leapfrogged over it, such as the Iran war, and the lack of coverage in the media means that people aren’t hearing or talking about it as much,” said Leiserowitz.
“There is this spiral of climate silence. I’ve even heard some leaders of climate groups say, ‘Don’t mention climate change.’ I don’t know why they’d make that decision, there’s absolutely no evidence that people care about this less than they did.”
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“This war on renewables isn’t even shared by his own base. Climate is still very polarized in the US. But, on the whole, Americans have positive views of clean energy and pretty negative views of fossil fuel energy, which they think is dirty and polluting.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/17/climate-change-public-opinion-trump-fossil-fuel
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I think get it – believers in the “everyone wants climate action” theory think the reason voters elected President Trump in 2024 is they hate his climate policies.
But you would expect an active imagination from people who think we’re in the midst of a climate crisis.
Exactly what one would expect a Liberal Socialist Yaley Professor to say. Must maintain the false message at all costs.
The only change in climate we want is all the climatards driven out of our government and academia at every level.
As a conservative I believe I should endeavor to be a good steward of the land, air, and water. But the government’s involvement should be quite limited, not picking winners and losers and not using my tax money for the questionable scams and schemes as it now does to supposedly mitigate “damage” caused by “carbon”.
I’d think very few conservatives would agree that The Grauniad speaks for them, and certainly not some lefty from Yale who directs their climate propaganda program.
Just because people are brainwashed into thinking there’s a climate change problem, doesn’t mean that there’s a problem.
Of course Leiserowitz, director of the climate communications program at Yale, would assert such an obvious falsehood. Else he would be out of a job. Apparently at Yale, communications equals prevarication.
His problem remains indelible reality.
47 ran on ‘drill, baby drill’ and won in a landslide. The US is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.
47 promised to get rid of the climate nonsense. Obama’s endangerment finding is now repealed. Offshore wind leases have been terminated. US EV subsidies have ended, as a result of which auto manufacturers have written off $87 billion of EV investment.
Look, when ideology smothers rationality in a person’s mind, they will continue with the etched-in dogma that has captured them, regardless of the observational realities that confront them.
On our human species’ evolutionary journey to (supposedly) develop reason and logic, we also picked up a capacity for irrationality.
Proving once again that nature is constantly out to get us and all living things on this earth in one way or another.
Gaining control of the MSM is instrumental in the Marxist plan and AGW is a HUGE part of it. It’s the best way to spread propaganda. If Americans don’t wake up we’ll be in the same boat as the UK.
“There is this spiral of climate silence.”
They don’t get it yet. “Climate” is spiraling as an issue because it has has been Flushed. Swirlied. Down the Tubes, as they say.
That is all for now.
Story tip!
Another study about consumption and inequality. The ‘Rich’ have should pay more carbon taxes.
– – – – – – – – –
‘Mega-consumers’ of food and energy cost environment $5.7tn a year, study finds
Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/18/mega-consumers-food-energy-damage-cost-environment
More CO2 emissions and models.
Environmental damages of the top ten percent consumers exceed global climate and biodiversity funding gaps
The top 10% of global consumers is disproportionately responsible for transgressing planetary boundaries, causing damages for which broader society bears the costs.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44458-026-00079-x
Mr Leiserowitz lives in his own little world.
I can’t think of any Trump supporters who have drunk the climate KoolAid.
It is statements like this from Lieserowitz and others like him that give many of us little to no reason to listen to academics and other so called experts and professionals.
What evidence can The Guardian cite that Americans are actually taking action to combat climate change? Are they driving less? Utilizing public transit more? Increasing purchases of EVs? Reducing their air travel? Demanding more environmental taxes to help reduce carbon emissions? Reducing their red-meat consumption? Moving into more walkable neighborhoods? The reality is that none of this is occurring, but all we’re seeing in an article like this is another example of the desperation of the mainstream media which knows its climate alarmism is being increasingly ignored, so it has to resort to hyper-exaggeration and outright lies to get any attention on the issue, and even that is almost entirely dismissed.
Guardian who?
Utter nonsense. No more need be said.
This American grew up in 50s Texas where there was the expression, “they’ll figure a way to tax the air we breathe”. And by golly “they” did – CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming; changed to “Climate Change” because for 18 recent years while CO2 levels continued to rise, temps didn’t). So, the democrats came up with their latest completely untenable phraseology – CC. Lying requires more lying which eventually catches up to the liar(s). A problem is that the liars know that people are voting in the meantime.
Does anyone remember how “they” were going to blame and tax mankind in the 70s for “The Coming Ice Age” scam? I just remember it died on the vine before they could come up with a plausible scam.
No sane person would make the claims of the writer of this piece of nonsense. The election was a rejection of the democratic nominee and a message of positive change to come. Climate was pretty far down the list of concerns. The current concern is the high cost of everything which will cost Trump in the mid term elections if republicans lose control of the house and or senate. Climate is not an issue to most and most know nothing on the subject except the distortions and lies of the leftist democratic political machine which is about 95% of the press. I may be biased but my experience is 95% of people commenting on the subject have never actually looked up anything on the subject not in the leftist news.
“Americans believe in climate change, worry about climate change and support action on climate change,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the climate communication program at Yale University.
Climate change was only “top of mind” for the pols and “experts” who profiteered by sounding their alarms. Working Americans are still being punished by its pointless mandates.
Meanwhile, from a 2025 poll by the YPCCC – Yale Program on Climate Change Communication . . .
Americans …. support action on climate change
But the ridiculous thing continues to be that nothing that the Guardian advocates, nothing that the US climate activists advocate, can accurately be described as ‘action on climate change’, because it will have, on the CAGW theory itself, no effect on the climate.
All we are dealing with is totally misguided energy policies, which have nothing to do with the climate and can have no effect on it.
The plain fact is that the West as a whole is emitting too little for it to make any material difference, on the theory, if it stopped entirely. The only ones who could do anything, on the theory, are China, India, Indonesia etc, and they are determined to grow their economies as fast as they can and let the emissions go where they may. Which is up.
Its like people demanding that the UK bans underfloor heating and heated towel rails, and position this as ‘action on climate change’. Yes, that is a real proposal from Ed Miliband, Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Shortly to get out from under and become Chancellor. Or its like the NHS trying to ban some anesthetics because they contain minute quantities of GHGs.
Its extraordinary, this complete gap between what is being claimed as the rationale for these pointless measures and the real situation in the world.
The Guardian had a similar piece the other day about the FCC targeting the claims made by people offering what is called ‘gender affirming treatment’. Which, even if the alleged problem exists, is about as effective a remedy for it as bleeding was back in the day.
The correct response is: OK, then propose something the US can do that will actually have an effect on climate change. If you can find anything!
The Guardian didn’t make it to the 21st century.
Another clueless Guardian journo. Most mainstream Americans who aren’t blue city dumbocrats don’t give a rat’s patootie about the so-called “climate crisis.” What we are recovering from is a “climate policy crisis.”
Good God, what a load of horse hockey! Saying so doesn’t make it so, Grauniad.
No, I don’t think so.