A new climate?

 In the years before Trump, most Republican politicians tried to avoid taking a clear position on climate change:  they generally said it was complicated and uncertain, and that more research was needed.  Trump, however, has a clear and consistent position:  it's a hoax.  According to the Trump Twitter Archive, his first mention of climate change on Twitter was in 2012:  "Why is @BarackObama wasting over $70 Billion on 'climate change activities?' Will he ever learn?"  One of his most recent (May 2024):  "So bad that FoxNews puts RFK Jr., considered the dumbest member of the Kennedy Clan, on their fairly conservative platform so much. ... He’s a Radical Left Lunatic whose crazy Climate Change views make the Democrat’s Green New Scam look Conservative."  Has this shift affected public opinion?  In 2019, I had a post on two questions that had been asked since the late 1990s, both of which showed a trend towards thinking that climate change was a serious problem.  One of those, "Do you think that global warming will pose a threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime?", has been asked a few times since then.  The updated results: 

The change may have slowed down, but it doesn't seem to have stopped, and definitely hasn't reversed.

I found two additional questions:  one that has been asked in Pew surveys, "I'd like your opinion about some possible international concerns for the United States. Do you think that each of the following is a major threat, a minor threat, or not a threat to the United States?...Global climate change," and a similar one by Gallup "Next, I am going to read you a list of possible threats to the vital interests of the United States in the next 10 years. For each one, please tell me if you see this as a critical threat, an important but not critical threat, or not an important threat at all.)...Global warming or climate change."  The averages (higher numbers mean greater threat).

Belief that climate change was a threat continued to rise in the Trump administration, but has fallen under Biden.  Why the difference between these questions and "threat to you or your way of life"?  Possibly it's because these refer to international threats and appear in the context of questions about other potential threats.  Greater international turmoil in the Biden administration may may have displaced concern about climate change as a threat to American interests (people aren't limited in the number of things that they can call critical threats, but I think there's some tendency to feel like you should make distinctions).  

There are other questions on climate change, which I may look at in another post.  But at least through 2020, concern with climate change continued to increase.  This may be because despite Trump's strong feelings on the issue, he didn't highlight it to the extent that he did with immigration, tariffs, and charges of election fraud.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]