Two-thirds of Americans say they are worried about climate change and want something done about it. This month, the Trump administration's response was to hand $700 million in subsidies to coal-fired power plants. Just in case you were wondering whose side anyone is on here.
The Poll Numbers Trump Would Rather You Not See
Yale University's climate communication program has been tracking American attitudes on this for years, and the numbers have barely budged. About two-thirds of Americans say they are worried about the climate crisis, according to Yale's longstanding polling. That proportion held steady through the Iran war, through inflation, through every news cycle that tried to bury it.
Here's the number that should be getting more attention: a mere 7% of American voters say they would support a candidate who advocates decreasing the use of renewables. Just 14% want a candidate pushing for more fossil fuels. "The president's viewpoint is not shared by most Americans or even most conservative Republicans," Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale's climate communication program, told The Guardian.
Read that again. Trump's war on clean energy is not popular with his own base. The guy who won the presidency is pursuing an energy agenda that roughly 86% of American voters do not want. That's not a governing mandate. That's a hostage situation.
Drill Baby Drill, Pay Baby Pay
The Guardian reports that a majority of US voters now link rising costs in their daily lives directly to the climate crisis. That's not a fringe position held by Patagonia vest owners in Brooklyn. That's most voters, connecting the dots between a warming planet and their thinning wallets.
Research cited by The Guardian found that US households are paying between $400 and $900 more every year because of climate impacts. In some counties across California, Louisiana, and Florida, that number climbs past $1,300 annually. Home insurance rates. Health costs. The price of gasoline while a Middle East war grinds on partly because of the world's addiction to the stuff these plants produce.
"If you live on the Gulf coast or in the rural American west you'd have to be out to lunch to not notice how climate change is affecting you in very real ways," said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at UCLA School of Law and co-author of the household cost research, speaking to The Guardian. The crisis is not abstract. It is showing up in people's mail.
The $700 Million Gift to a Dying Industry
This month, according to The Guardian, the Trump administration handed out $700 million to prop up coal-fired power plants. Coal. The dirtiest, most polluting, most technologically obsolete form of energy production in the American grid. The stuff that kills people through air pollution before climate change even gets a chance to finish the job.
This is the same president who said in March, according to The Guardian, "I'm proudly telling you that we're going to try and have no windmills built in the United States." He has previously called clean energy "the scam of the century." He has blocked wind and solar projects, though courts have repeatedly pushed back. He has fired climate scientists and pulled the US out of international climate agreements.
Seven hundred million dollars. For coal. While two-thirds of the country says it wants action on climate change. The cognitive dissonance required to frame this as a populist presidency is genuinely staggering.
The Media Looked Away and Politicians Followed
So if the public still cares, why does it feel like climate change has fallen off the agenda? The Guardian points to a compounding problem: the media is covering it less, and politicians are talking about it less, which means the public hears about it less even though they still care.
Outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, and CBS have cut climate journalist positions, according to The Guardian. Coverage has shrunk even as heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires have gotten worse. "There is this spiral of climate silence," Leiserowitz told The Guardian. "I've even heard some leaders of climate groups say, 'don't mention climate change.' I don't know why they'd make that decision, there's absolutely no evidence that people care about this less than they did."
On the Democratic side, the political math has curdled into something depressing. The party passed landmark climate legislation under Biden, watched Republicans tear it apart, then lost the 2024 election anyway. Clausing told The Guardian the dynamic plainly: "People on the left know this is a problem and worry about it but think 'why talk about this if I want to win elections?' The last guy did, he did something about it and then this happened." So the lesson being absorbed is: don't try. Brilliant.
What the 2024 Election Did and Did Not Mean
There is a story that got told after the 2024 election, and it went something like this: Americans voted against climate policy, the green agenda is dead, the people have spoken. Yale's polling suggests that story is wrong in almost every particular.
"The 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change," Leiserowitz told The Guardian. "Americans believe in climate change, worry about climate change and support action on climate change. That didn't change before, during or after the election."
What changed was the salience of other issues. The Iran war. Inflation. The cost of groceries. Climate got leapfrogged, not rejected. There is a significant difference between "voters didn't prioritize this issue at the ballot box in 2024" and "voters want the president to spend $700 million keeping coal plants alive and ban windmills." The Trump administration is counting on nobody noticing that gap.
The Dingo Take
The political class has convinced itself that caring about climate change is an electoral liability, and it has done so by looking at the wrong data. The public is not confused about climate change. The public is worried about it, wants something done about it, and is literally paying for it every month in their insurance bills and grocery receipts. What the public is is exhausted, and poorly served by media that has quietly stopped explaining what is happening to their planet.
Trump is not filling a popular demand when he subsidizes coal and threatens to ban wind turbines. He is doing the bidding of an industry with the money and the lobbying infrastructure to matter to him, while the 86% of voters who don't want more fossil fuels are distributed across a country that has been told, repeatedly, that this issue is too complicated and too politically radioactive to talk about. That's not democracy. That's a protection racket with better branding.
Seven hundred million dollars to coal. Not to the households paying an extra $900 a year because of climate impacts. Not to the insurance markets collapsing across Florida and California. Not to the firefighters or the flood victims. To coal. The Dingo Daily will keep saying it until someone in charge is embarrassed enough to do something about it, or until the Gulf Coast is entirely underwater, whichever comes first.
