It’s Tuesday, November 26, and most Americans say the government isn’t doing enough on climate.
Nearly 80 percent of Americans now accept that humans play a role in our changing climate, while 67 percent believe that politicians should be doing more to fight the crisis, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.
The poll of 3,627 U.S. adults found that although Republicans and Democrats remain at odds over what’s causing our overheating planet and the proper policies to address it, a majority of Americans — including young Republicans — say that the U.S. should be developing alternative sources of energy instead of expanding fossil fuels. And some of those alternative sources, like solar and wind, have a ton of bipartisan support.
While 90 percent of Democrats agree that the government must do more to fight climate change, Republicans are divided along ideological, age, and gender lines. The survey found that a majority of moderate or liberal Republicans say that Washington is taking too little action on climate change. Meanwhile, some 62 percent of conservative Republicans say climate policies hurt the economy.
The good news here, though, is that the new survey corroborates previous polling showing that young Republicans care about climate change. More than half of millennial and Gen Z Republicans think the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change, and 78 percent want the U.S. to prioritize alternative energy sources over fossil fuels. When can Gen Z vote again?
The Smog
Need-to-know basis
The U.N.’s annual Emissions Gap Report, released Tuesday, says the world is currently on track for more than 3 degrees C of warming over pre-industrial levels by 2100. To prevent warming beyond 1.5 degrees C, the world must reduce emissions by 55 percent over the next 10 years. For context, emissions have risen 1.5 percent every year for the last several years.
In the biggest developing nations, investments in clean energy are down, and coal-fired electricity generation is up, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The most significant drop was in China, where renewable energy investments fell from $122 billion in 2017 to $86 billion in 2018.
A new study finds that people who live in minority neighborhoods have higher energy bills than those who live in white neighborhoods, regardless of their socioeconomic status. The authors attribute the disparity partially to segregation — minority families tend to live in neighborhoods with older buildings and smaller units that have inefficient heating and lighting systems — and partially to government policies that do not incentivize efficiency upgrades in affordable housing.
