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The Yale Program on Climate Communication released a comprehensive 2021 report on Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions and support for climate policies at the state, congressional district, metro area and county levels.
Charlotte Hughes
Staff Reporter
Lukas Flippo, Senior Photographer
Yale researchers have found that 75 percent of adults in New Haven’s 3rd Congressional District BelieveClimate change is happening at a higher level than the 72 percentMany Americans believe in its existence.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communications (YPCCC) has updated its Climate Opinion maps. These maps highlight climate opinions by state or locality and are based on data collected in 2021. These maps provide insight into New Haveners’ views on the climate crisis and their opinions about public policies to address it. The research team for these maps consists of Jennifer Marlon, Liz Neyens GRD ’15, Martial Jefferson ’11, Seth Rosenthal, Peter Howe and Matto Mildenberger GRD ’16.
“Public opinion is key to addressing climate change,” Marlon, a lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, wrote in an email to the News. “If we don’t have a majority of the public prioritizing the issue, there is little motivation for politicians to focus on making cheap, clean energy more accessible, cleaning up our transportation system so we’re not breathing toxic air in our cities, cleaning up and strengthening our infrastructure to protect our communities, the health of our children, and much more. Our new maps show what the public thinks and, critically, *where* they think it.”
The updated maps reveal that 70% of adults are now in the workforce. Be worried about global warming in Connecticut’s Congressional District 3, which includes New Haven and the surrounding cities of Milford and Hamden. Congressional District 3 is the second-most concerned district in the state, ranking behind Connecticut’s Congressional District 4, where 75 percent of adults are worried about global warming.
However, only 47 per cent of New Haven residents who were surveyed reported having met them personally. Experiencing the effects global warming.
Only 35% of New Haveners who were surveyed said they heard about global warming at most once per week.
“It is concerning that people aren’t hearing about climate change more in the media in Connecticut given our coastal location and vulnerability to storms, sea level rise and flooding,” said Chris Schweitzer, an activist and director of the New Haven Leon Sister City Project.
These maps also show where New Haveners stand in regard to climate-related public policies.
In Connecticut’s Congressional District 3, 81 percent of surveyed adults support funding research into renewable energy sources. Seventy-six per cent support the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant and 71 per cent support strict CO2 limits for existing coal-fired power stations.
Another 81% of respondents support tax incentives for people who buy energy-efficient cars or solar panels. 68% support requiring utility companies that produce 20% of their electricity from renewable sources.
Only 29 percent support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil, and 48 percent support expanding oil and gas drilling off of the US coast.
80 percent of respondents believe that schools should educate students about the potential causes, consequences, and solutions to global warming.
“Most people underestimate just how much support for climate action exists in their community,” YPCCC Director of External Partnerships Joshua Low added. “Elected officials use the maps to understand what climate opinion is in their districts –– something that policymakers often underestimate.”
New Haven respondents were asked if they believed corporations should do more to address climate change. Sixty-nine per cent believe that citizens should be more responsible and 66 percent think Congress should take more action. 50 percent believe Governor Ned Lamont needs to do more to combat global warming.
Neyens, a Yale Program on Climate Change Communication research data analyst, stressed the importance of local public opinion surveys.
“Surveys are expensive to conduct and so there aren’t many data available at the subnational level. And so the analysis that the climate opinion map does allows us to understand public opinion at the sub-national level,” Neyens said. “And then that can be used by any person who’s interested in understanding public opinion in their region.”
In 2014, Yale Climate Opinion Maps was created.
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