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Warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which climate scientists predicted would feed more intense hurricanes, contributed to the intensification of Hurricane Helen in September. That was before the big October storm Milton hit. Milton’s damage will become clear in the coming days.
Science suggests Americans need to get used to more extreme weather events, including extreme storms, rising ocean temperatures, wildfires, and hotter weather. Evacuation and destruction will become more common.
In this case, two epic storms occur in two weeks.
But as much as people are talking about it, climate change doesn’t register as a “very important” issue in this year’s presidential election, according to the latest polls.
In a Gallup poll from late September (most of which was conducted just before Helen made landfall), registered voters were asked to rate the importance of 22 issues in this year’s election.
Just 5% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say climate change is “very” important to their vote, as do just over a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters. .
Of the 22 issues listed by Gallup, only two – climate change and transgender rights – were said by less than half to be “very” or “extremely” important to the president’s vote choice.
To be effective, you don’t have to put the problem first. Transgender rights may not be an issue that a majority of voters cite as important, but allies of former President Donald Trump attack Vice President Kamala Harris in the final months of the campaign. This is an issue that we are spending a lot of advertising money on.
Voters pay most attention to the economy, with 52% of registered voters, Republicans and Republican-leaning, saying the economy is “very important” to their vote. The second most cited “extremely important” issue, democracy in the United States, was promoted by the Democratic Party.
The top five issues most cited as “very important” to Republicans and Republican voters in the survey are:
Economy Immigration Terrorism and National Security Crime Taxes
The top five Democratic voters and Democrats were completely different.
American Democracy Types of Supreme Court Candidates Abortion Medical Education
That doesn’t mean climate change isn’t important to Americans. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS in December found that nearly three-quarters of Americans, including half of Republicans, support policies that reduce climate pollution.
At a time when climate change disasters are disrupting life in parts of the country, misinformation is driving some of the conversation.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, is a climate change skeptic like Trump. She blames space lasers, cloud seeding, and other experimental technologies, falsely claims that governments control the weather, and spreads outrageous conspiracy theories about the causes of these storms.
“Climate change is the new coronavirus,” she said in a social media post, comparing the pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans to global warming. The rest of her post claims that the government controls the weather.
By the way, Greene went to see a college football game in Alabama with President Trump because the state was flooded by flooding from Helen.
President Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, was asked about climate change during the vice presidential debate in early October, when it became clear that Helen had caused a catastrophe.
Vance tossed around the word climate change, instead acknowledging that there are “extraordinary weather patterns.” He acknowledged the extreme weather and said it was more productive than discussing “weird science.”
See in photos: Hurricane Helen rages on
But Vance’s remedies for so-called extreme weather are counterintuitive. He said President Trump’s plan to significantly increase oil production is the answer because it will bring more energy production and manufacturing jobs to the United States.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was ineffective at drawing a clear contrast. The anti-inflation law passed by Democrats is already aimed at revitalizing U.S. manufacturing with a pivot toward a greener economy.
Meanwhile, Harris is making every effort to signal that she now supports the practice of hydraulic fracturing, which is important to Pennsylvania’s economy, even though climate change activists oppose it. . In an interview with CNN in August, Harris argued that the country could address the climate crisis without ending fracking.
“What I’ve seen is that without banning fracking, we can grow and we can foster a thriving clean energy economy,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash, adding that her new I explained my position.
Still, there is a big difference between acknowledging that a climate crisis exists and rejecting the term. In a recent Gallup poll, when voters were asked who would do a better job of tackling climate change, Harris had a 26-point lead over Trump. This was the largest spread in public opinion polls. For example, Trump’s lead over Harris on his biggest issues, the economy and immigration, was 9 percentage points. These are small advantages on issues that seem to be attracting more voters.
