Concern about climate change continues to fall across many polled territories around the world. Interestingly, it is often the young, who have been subject to relentless fear mongering all their lives, who have started to lose interest in a narrative informing them that the scientific process is ‘settled’ in the interests of the Net Zero collectivisation. Poll after poll is pointing to falling concern. The latest from New Jersey-based Monmouth University shows a dramatic fall over three years from among those aged 18-34 who believe climate change – generally understood as human-caused climate change – is a “very serious problem”. An even bigger fall is reported in the same age group of those who support Government climate change action.
As the graph below shows, the percentage in the age group 18-34 who think climate change is a very serious problem has fallen from 67% to 50% since 2021. Significant falls are also reported across all age groups. The overall proportion of Americans who believe climate change is a very serious problem has fallen below half for the first time since 2018. The fall in support for Government action, at a time when the Biden Administration is forcing future generations to pay for a deficit-busting green boondoggle, is also dropping sharply, and is down among the young from an 82% high in 2018 to 62% today.
Other polls have pointed to declining support for the notion that humans control the climate and burning hydrocarbons is leading to Thermogeddon. Last year a poll conducted by a group within the University of Chicago found that belief in humans causing all or most climate change had slumped in America to 49% from the 60% level recorded just five years ago. Similar falls have been recorded elsewhere, with a December 2022 IPSOS survey covering two thirds of the world’s population revealing that nearly four people in every 10 believed climate change was mainly due to natural causes.
All these polls will be alarming alarmists with a suspicion that constant wolf-calling is starting to lose effect among the jaded young. Climate change is becoming so last Tuesday. The world has many problems to be solved, but bad weather is just a fact of life. It doesn’t take massive intelligence to see that none of the predictions over the last 40 years of impending climate collapse have come to pass. The fear is that the young see Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, claiming the world is “boiling”, and far from being scared witless and not having babies, they wonder how such a plonker rose so high in international politics.
In America, the issue of climate change is divided along party lines. Nearly all Democrats (92%) believe climate change is happening, while only 51% of Republicans “accept climate change as a reality”, claims the Monmouth team. The wording here can be questioned since in the interests of simplicity it seems to ascribe climate change to just one human cause. As a result, it suggests that for 49% of Republicans, climate change is not real, seemingly ignoring the fact that climate change is real and caused by natural variation. A later question found 31% of those polled thought climate change was caused equally by humans and natural variation. This is also too simplistic to mean very much. Nevertheless, it was found that over the last three years, the support for the notion that climate change was “very serious” fell from 85% to 77% among Democrats, from 21% to just 13% among Republicans, and from 56% to 43% among Independents.
What can be deduced from this and other polling evidence is that Republicans are much more sceptical about the unsubstantiated claim that humans control the climate thermostat and that as a result some great catastrophe is looming. The Chicago survey asked a similar question on climate change but allowed for a number of options around human and natural causes. When it added the ‘mostly’ or ‘entirely’ caused by humans replies together, it found lower levels of support than the Monmouth results. Overall support since 2018 has fallen away from 61% in 2018 to 49%. Republican support has remained stable at its low level of 33%, while Democrat support is down 12 points to 60%.
The real concern in green circles around the world is that if the Republican Donald Trump wins the November U.S. presidential election, Net Zero, on a federal level at least, is dead in the water for the next four years. And if it is dead in the water in the U.S., while China, India and Russia continue paying mere lip service to the project, it is dead in the water, full stop.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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