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.
