Two Climate Change Misconceptions That Make Solutions Harder

Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash

It used to be that the biggest problem with how Americans thought about climate change was outright denial. A significant part of the population (including the 45th president) thought climate change was fabricated by Greenpeace or something. They’d elbow you when it was really cold out in the winter and say, “where’s your global warming now?”

But that’s not really the case anymore. Nationally, almost three-quarters of Americans say that climate change is happening, and only 14% say that it isn’t. Only 7% of Americans think that climate change isn’t affecting the weather. A full two-thirds say they’re worried about climate change.

There’s actually a lot of agreement on what should be done about climate change, as well — three-quarters of Americans want subsidies for green technology and research, while two-thirds favor a carbon tax on fossil fuels and emission limits for coal plants. It’s really hard to get an overwhelming majority of Americans to agree on anything, so these numbers indicate an encouraging degree of consensus.

So congratulations, America. Three long decades after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear that there was a scientific consensus on global warming, a large majority of us finally agree on the following: climate change is happening, and it’s bad…