USA Still Deeply Divided on Climate Change – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… there are significant opportunities to connect climate action to other issues …”

CLIMATE NOTE · Sep 18, 2025

Top Public Worries in the U.S.

By Marija Verner, Jennifer Carman, Seth Rosenthal, Emily Goddard, Matthew Goldberg, Eric Scheuch, Edward Maibach, John Kotcher and Anthony Leiserowitz

Filed under: Audiences and Beliefs & Attitudes

Climate change connects directly to many other social issues such as the cost of living, the economy, health, disruption of government services, and national security. Understanding how Americans prioritize these other issues can provide valuable insights for climate communicators.

In our Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) surveys, we routinely ask people how worried they are about global warming. In our most recent CCAM survey, conducted May 1-12, 2025, we also asked how worried they are about a number of other public issues.

Key takeaways:

• Government corruption is a top worry for Americans – a majority (54%) say they are very worried about it. The cost of living and the economy are also among the top concerns (48% and 47% say they are very worried).
• Under one-third of Americans (29%) say they are very worried about global warming.
• Among the Alarmed, top worries are global warming (92% say they are very worried), disruption of federal government services, and the state of democracy in the U.S. (82% say they are very worried about both). Meanwhile, top worries for the Concerned are the economy (56%), the cost of living (54%), and government corruption (53%).

…

Conclusion

Americans face a wide range of issues today, including rising costs of living, government corruption, immigration policy, democratic institutions, and climate change. These worries vary significantly by Global Warming’s Six Americas as well as political party and ideology, revealing both shared anxieties and deep divisions. 

For climate communicators, these findings offer important strategic insights. While direct concern about global warming remains politically polarized, there are significant opportunities to connect climate action to other issues. Government corruption, the cost of living, and concerns about the economy rank as top worries across most political groups, suggesting that connecting climate change to these concerns could broaden appeal. For instance, communicating how climate action can reduce energy costs, create economic opportunities, or address concerns about government accountability and transparency in environmental policy could resonate across the political spectrum.

Read more: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/top-public-worries-in-the-u-s/

The issue of government corruption really stands out as a top concern, but this would be a difficult issue for climate advocates to leverage. It is green schemes which receive billions of dollars of questionable government stimulus funds.

I mean consider Solyndra. Nobody as far as I know has been accused of or convicted of corruption, but President Obama granting massive federal loan guarantees to a company connected to a generous democrat donor, a company which shortly afterwards went bankrupt, the optics were not good.

I don’t know what Obama did was corrupt – perhaps it was all just a big coincidence. But we all know, when billions of dollars of loosely regulated free federal green stimulus money is on offer, the corrupt are quick to try to capitalise on any opportunities.

Sometimes accusations of green corruption come from the most unlikely sources. When Trump hater Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs set out to make a documentary about green energy, they expected to find evidence of the big oil conspiracy holding back the renewable transition. Instead they found evidence of a very different conspiracy – and had the integrity to report what they found.

Of course, despite all too rare exposes like Planet of the Humans, most greens prefer to cling to comforting though false narratives that fossil fuel is the major corrupting influence. If fossil fuel had that kind of pull in US politics, the USA would never have turned their back on coal.

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