A new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 58% of people think scientists are right, and Donald Trump is wrong, that human activity is the main cause of climate change. Only 4% of U.S. voters say climate change isn’t happening.
About 78% of Democrats say human activity is the cause of climate change, compared to 58% of Independents and 34% of Republicans.
The poll was conducted a week after a Congress-mandated major climate change report said climate change would have significant impact on the country socially, environmentally, and economically. The phenomenon could add hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the U.S. cost of living.
Trump had the report released on Black Friday, which minimized coverage, and told reporters that he read “some” of the report and said, “I don’t believe it,” according to CNN.
Other reports, like that of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have noted danger of having average temperatures climb above 1.5 degrees Celsius and the difficulty of stopping that progress when temperatures had already grown by one degree, the Washington Post reported.
Trump, his administration, and the GOP have frequently disregarded and downplayed the concept of climate change and the overwhelming scientific consensus on the topic. “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said in a Washington Post interview last week. “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it.”
Today the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to lift an Obama-era carbon rule on new coal power plants, making them more economical to build and run and potentially encouraging additional construction. Coal use in the U.S. is at a 39-year low.