More than half of the American people consider climate change something of a worry, but only a fraction think it will personally affect them and that it should be a top priority for the nation, according to two new polls.
One poll, a cooperative effort of Yale University with Utah State University, tracked opinions on climate change across all 50 U.S. states and in all 435 U.S. Congressional districts.
A second research effort from Saint Leo University in Florida polled more than a thousand respondents across the nation, both voters and nonvoters, about the proper national response to climate change.
The Yale/Utah research was designed to focus on public opinion about climate change, down to the state or even city level. It compiled data from 10 large previous surveys on climate change conducted from 2008 to 2014 to create a new statistical model.
"Although a majority of people in every state think global warming is happening, this analysis makes it possible to see how much opinions differ within each state," said Utah researcher Peter Howe.
That analysis found that 63 percent of Americans believe climate change is real, though less than half said they think it's "mostly human caused."
Asked if climate change worried them, 52 percent said yes, but only 34 percent said they thought it might have a direct impact on their lives.
Those are statistical averages, of course, but the analysis showed considerable variation across the country, said Yale researcher Jennifer Marlon, who helped develop the model.
Concern about global warming and climate change ranged from a low of 38 percent in Pickett County, Tennessee, to a high of 74 percent in Washington, D.C., the Yale/Utah research showed.
"We have become so used to hearing a single number that represents what Americans think about this issue that just seeing the great diversity across the country was really surprising," Marlon said.
The Saint Leo poll put the question of climate change in a wider context of national priorities.
Asked if they thought worldwide climate change was "the most important issue facing the country today," only 3 percent of the respondents in the poll said they believed that to be the case.
As a national priority, those polled put climate change significantly below jobs, the economy and the issue of immigration, and just slightly above the problem of gun control.
"The general public sees effects of the climate changing, although a majority did not attribute any single [global] effect to climate change," said Saint Leo scientist Leo Ondrovic. "While this is encouraging, it seems there is more work to be done in explaining these connections."
