Everywhere I have been over the last week, conversations have centered on the choking air quality in the midwest.
The sense of fear, dread, and anger is palpable.
Will that be true generally, and will it make a difference in how people look at political choices, or will we still make decisions based on whether a trans person is playing volleyball somewhere?
Amid a summer of dangerous heat, drought and floods, a majority of Americans are connecting increasingly severe weather to the climate crisis, new polling shows, despite efforts by Donald Trump to dismiss global heating as a “con job” and a “hoax”.
It’s a sign that attempts to suppress and polarize climate concerns may not be seeing full success, said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress.
“We started with the question of ‘are extreme weather events increasing,’because we thought [that] if we can find consensus on that, that can be an entry point to being able to have a more bipartisan conversation about climate and climate intervention,” she said.
About 61% of likely American voters believe extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past five years, the survey from the progressive polling firm Data for Progress, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found. That includes 72% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and nearly half – 46% – of all Republicans.
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator who has long criticized Democrats for quieting their talk of global warming – or “climate-hushing” – said the new data “adds to the mountain of evidence that the public is way ahead of the politicians on the dire consequences of climate change”.
“Climate hushers who ignore this righteous fight should take note,” he told the Guardian.
The researchers also asked participants about whether or not specific forms of extreme weather are being “worsened by climate change”. Majorities linked climate change to worsening wildfires (64%), droughts (63%), flooding and flash flooding (62%), hurricanes (59%), and severe thunderstorms and hailstorms (59%). But heatwaves topped the list, with 67% saying climate change is making them worse – including 48% of Republicans, the highest share for any of the extreme weather events surveyed.
That could be because nearly everyone in the US has experienced unusually hot days or weeks in recent years, said Adcox. High temperatures kill more people annually in the US than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined.
“There are regional differences across experiences with extreme weather,” said Adcox. “Extreme heat happens to have the biggest footprint in the American context compared to some of these other types of extreme weather.”
The finding indicates that scorching conditions could provide an “interesting opening salvo” to speak about the climate crisis, she added.
