US voters linking climate crisis to rising bills despite Trump’s ‘green scam’ claims | US news

Most Americans now associate the worsening climate crisis with cost-of-living pressures, and a clear majority also disagree with the Trump administration’s moves to gut climate research and shut down wind farms, according to a new poll.

In the United States, about 65% of registered voters believe global warming affects the cost of living, according to a Yale University poll.

Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves, exacerbated by the climate crisis, are taking a toll on food production, with recent spikes in coffee and chocolate prices blamed by experts, at least in part, on global warming.

At the same time, many Americans are facing rising home electricity costs and sharp increases in home insurance premiums, both areas also being influenced by the climate crisis and the Trump administration’s decision to stifle solar and wind power, often the cheapest energy sources.

There has also been a broad backlash in many communities against the new data centers, which have been championed by the administration and the tech industry for advancing artificial intelligence but attacked by critics for causing heat emissions for the planet and increasing electricity bills.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication, said that although the focus on the climate crisis by many politicians and activists is fading, many Americans understand the connection between rising temperatures and rising bills.

“I find it astonishing that even some in the climate community are saying we should stop talking about climate because there is a cost of living crisis,” he said.

“It is a fundamental mistake to treat these issues as mutually exclusive: climate solutions are also cost-of-living solutions. Most elite rhetoric is very poor at estimating or understanding levels of public concern, and this is a good example.”

At a time when concerns about immigration, crime and inflation seem to dominate, Leiserowitz said the climate crisis can still motivate voters if handled correctly.

“If your child has asthma, you should care about climate change. If you want to make money, you should care about climate change. If you like chocolate, you should care about climate change,” he said. “If we just talk about it from a purely scientific or political perspective, it’s an incredibly small set of stories to tell, even though it’s the biggest story on the planet.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to dismantle key environmental rules, fire federal scientists, suppress public information about the climate crisis, and explicitly support the fossil fuel industry in favor of cleaner forms of energy. The president said renewable energy was a “scam” and a “scam” and attempted to ban some solar and wind farms.

The agenda is deeply unpopular with a clear majority of Americans, the Yale poll suggests, with nearly eight in ten registered voters opposing restrictions on climate information and research, while the same share of voters reject Trump’s demand to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Additionally, 65% of voters disagree with Trump’s decision to block new offshore wind farms.

“This kind of thing keeps happening — the EPA website has been purged of climate information and the administration wants to kill one of the most important climate research organizations in the world for ideological reasons,” Leiserowitz said.

“The majority of people think this doesn’t make sense. The last election clearly wasn’t a referendum on climate change – there was very little discussion about it – and yet the administration is treating it like it was. There was no mandate to do any of this. That’s why all the polls show Trump is deeply underwater on all of these issues.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to questions about the unpopularity of the administration’s environmental policies, saying instead that Trump had “brought common sense to America’s energy and sustainability policies.”

“Once again, America is leading an era of energy abundance and countries are lining up to partner with the United States on deals to import American energy,” she said.

“President Trump has set a good example for the rest of the world by reversing course on Joe Biden’s green energy scam and unleashing our natural resources to strengthen the stability of our grid and lower energy costs for American families and businesses.”

The United States, unlike most other industrialized countries, remains very polarized in its thinking about the climate crisis. While the Yale poll finds that 59% of voters would prefer to support a candidate who supports climate action, that number is skewed by the overwhelming majority of Democrats who do.

On the other hand, only 21% of conservative Republicans want to support a climate hawk candidate, while 37% want just the opposite.

“Looking at the long-term trajectory, we see a dramatic increase in the share of Americans who think climate change should be a priority for the president and Congress,” Leiserowitz said. “But among Republicans, that number has remained pretty much stable the entire time. It hasn’t changed much.”