New polling has found that 65% of registered US voters believe global heating is affecting the cost of living, connecting the worsening climate crisis with personal financial pressures. The survey by Yale University and George Mason University reveals a clear majority see a link between rising temperatures and rising bills.
Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves, exacerbated by the climate crisis, are taking a toll on food production, with recent spikes in the cost of coffee and chocolate partly blamed on global heating. Many Americans have also faced rising home electricity costs and steep increases in home insurance premiums, influenced by the climate crisis and the Trump administration's decision to choke off solar and wind power, often the cheapest source of energy.
There has been a broad backlash against new datacenters, championed by the administration and the tech industry for advancing artificial intelligence but criticised for causing planet-heating emissions and raising power bills. Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said many Americans grasp the connection between rising temperatures and rising bills, despite some politicians and activists downplaying the climate crisis amid cost-of-living concerns.
“It’s a fundamental error to treat these issues as mutually exclusive – climate solutions are also cost-of-living solutions,” he said. “Most of the elite discourse is very bad at estimating or understanding levels of public concern.”
The Trump administration has dismantled key environmental rules, fired federal scientists, removed climate information, and backed the fossil fuel industry over renewables. The president has called renewables a “con job” and a “scam” and attempted to ban certain solar and wind farms. However, the polling shows this agenda is deeply unpopular: nearly eight in ten voters oppose restrictions on climate information and research, and 65% disagree with blocking new offshore windfarms.
A White House spokesperson did not address the unpopularity of the policies, instead claiming that President Trump had “restored common sense to America’s energy and sustainability policies” and that “countries are lining up to partner with the US for deals to import US energy”.
