Voters have little confidence that anything significant will emerge from this month’s global climate talks that begin in Brazil this week, but they are also split on what the best course forward would be, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows. [some emphasis, links added]
The latest I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Oct. 28 to Oct. 31, asked 1,418 adults the following question:
“How confident are you that the upcoming United Nations climate talks (COP30) in Brazil, with a goal of raising $1.3 trillion in climate finance, will succeed in curbing global warming?”
Overall, just 34% said they were either “very confident” (11%) or “somewhat confident” (23%), while 49% said they were “not very confident” (27%) and 22% said they were “not at all confident.” Another 18% said they weren’t sure.
Looking across responses by demographic groups, two stand out: Responses by age and responses by political affiliation.
Start with age. Among those 18 to 24 years old, 46% were “confident,” while 38% were “not confident. For 25 to 44 years, the comparable numbers were nearly identical: 47% confident, 37% not confident.
But for those 45 to 64, the confident share fell to 26% while the not confident jumped to 52%. For those 65 and above, the confident number dips further to 20%, while the not confident surges to 65%.
Clearly, there’s a major generation gap on the climate change issue.
Political affiliation is another difference, but in a surprising way.
Democrats (41% confident, 43% not confident) aren’t really too far from Republicans (35% confident, 51% not confident) when it comes to confidence, but as the numbers show, GOP members are less confident overall.
It’s not the Republicans who take the prize for least confident overall, but rather the independents who come in at 26% confident, to 54% not confident. That’s a 28 percentage-point confidence gap, compared to a 16 percentage-point deficit for the GOP and just 2 percentage points for the Dems.
Race is another point of departure. Among white poll respondents, just 29% said they were confident, while 54% said they weren’t. That’s a minus-25 point gap. But when blacks and Hispanics were asked, the response was flipped: 48% confident, 34% not confident, a plus-14 point difference.
Taken together, the whites and blacks/Hispanics are 39 points apart in their responses.
But now comes the question for those who are not confident: What should be done? Specifically, I&I/TIPP asked:
“If you are not confident in the UN’s ability to curb global warming, which of the following approaches do you think is best for the future?”
Overall, 21% selected “continue using conventional carbon-based fuels and rely on technology to find better, cheaper replacements”; 25% picked “keep using alternative energy sources, even if they cost more and have limited effect on CO2 emissions”; just 14% opted for “force companies and consumers to use less fuel through taxes and higher prices to reduce global temperatures”; and 21% went for “none of the above — global population decline will naturally reduce the carbon footprint.”
So there really is no solid consensus in how to address a problem as diffuse and ill-defined as “climate change” or “global warming.”
That shouldn’t be a surprise. Some formerly ardent advocates for aggressive global action against climate change have left the fold and now suggest far less draconian measures.
In early November, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates stunned and disappointed many zealous global climate change activists by asserting in a long blog post that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
The New York Post called this a “stunning reversal” after “years of doomerism.” And indeed it was.
So was the reversal on climate change by Ted Nordhaus, director of the Breakthrough Institute, who recently noted that:
“[T]he climate movement has effectively conflated consensus science about the reality and anthropogenic origins of climate change with catastrophist claims about climate risk for which there is no consensus whatsoever.”
Gates, whose immense wealth remains tied up in Microsoft, understands that the move to an artificial intelligence-based economy will require a massive increase in electrical output.
There’s no way that can happen in a world where, as in much of the European Union, nations are actually deindustrializing by dismantling nuclear power plants and forcing up prices of fossil fuels to display their climate-change virtue.
Now, some researchers are making a different case entirely: University of California scientists report that because of a “fatal flaw” in the carbon cycle, “global warming could eventually swing in the opposite direction, tipping the planet into an ice age.”
Yes, the so-called “global consensus” has been crumbling of late, as countries struggle with dwindling energy supplies leading to rising prices.
Global freezing? Global warming? Which is it? In addition to rising energy costs, the mixed messages, ideological bias, and lack of scientific rigor in the climate change field might be big reasons why voters in the I&I/TIPP Poll are cynical about the COP30 global climate change talks.
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