RUTHFULLY YOURS

Until recently, the U.S. and the rest of the developed world pursued a costly global policy of “net-zero” carbon emissions to battle the supposed ill-effect of climate change. But President Donald Trump has changed all that by ending the U.S.’ commitment to the global net-zero effort. Will today’s highly partisan voters support Trump? The latest I&I/TIPP Poll data suggest a high-degree of skepticism among many voters over global warming’s threat.

Three-quarters of those responding to the I&I/TIPP Poll agreed there are reasons for “public skepticism toward climate-change policies,” while just over a third of voting-age Americans say they themselves “distrust” the information used to sell previous climate-change policies.

For the national online poll, taken from Jan. 29-31, 1,478 adults were first asked: “How much do you trust the claims made by climate change activists and policymakers?” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

While 50% said they either trust “completely” (20%) or “somewhat” (30%), another 36% said they “completely” (20%) or “somewhat” (16%) distrust claims made by climate activists and politicians.

Once again, political affiliation plays a role in how voters see the issue. Democrats overwhelmingly say “trust” (67%) over “distrust” (21%) the climate-change claims that have been made, but Republicans are more skeptical, with 37% answering “Trust” and a 51% majority answering “Distrust.” Among independents, responses were somewhere in the middle, at 47% ‘Trust” and 35% “Distrust.”

Trust in the climate claims rises with income. Of those earning $30,000 or less a year, “trust” was 46%; for those at $30,000-$50,000 a year, 47%; for those at $50,000-$75,000 a year, 51%; and for those over $75,000, 63%.

A follow-on question asked the following: “What do you think is the main reason for public skepticism toward climate change policies?”

The responses showed what really concerns people most about the public response to the hypothetical threats of climate change. Of those responding, 25% cited “Lack of clear, transparent scientific data,” 22% responded “Perceived hypocrisy of leaders and activists,” 17% agreed on “Economic consequences of proposed policies,” and 8% answered “Media exaggeration of climate risks.”

Meanwhile, only 8% said they don’t believe there’s widespread skepticism over climate change scientific claims, while 16% said they weren’t sure.

This is more than a gauge of sentiment about climate change policies in general and the “net zero” policy in particular.

For one thing, talking about making the world “carbon-neutral” by the middle of the century can take place on an abstract plane, but it will have enormous financial and economic consequences unparalleled in human history.

A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute found: “Capital spending on physical assets for energy and land-use systems in the net-zero transition between 2021 and 2050 would amount to about $275 trillion, or $9.2 trillion per year on average, an annual increase of as much as $3.5 trillion from today.”

Opponents of such spending argue that’s an enormous expenditure, one that could impoverish billions of people on Earth for no actual provable gain. If you need a comparison, total global GDP last year, according to Statista, was roughly $110 trillion.

With that in mind, supporters say continued rises in temperatures could bring “severe storms, floods, drought, and wildfire,” along with permanent flooding of current coastal areas.

Americans don’t seem to buy the doom-and-gloom of such prognostications.

While every natural disaster has partisans claiming it’s caused by human-made CO2 in the air, American voters seem to feel that the message they’re getting through the media, politicians, government bureaucrats and NGOs is distorted by partisan, lock-step belief in the theory of runaway heating of the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, for nearly half a century the repeated predictions of doom and gloom from CO2-caused global warming “experts” have been stunningly wrong.

Not surprisingly, in poll after poll, many Americans say that while they believe climate change is real, it remains very low on their list of actual concerns. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, asked Americans to rank 20 current national economic issues by whether they were a “very big problem.” Climate change ranked 17th out of 20.

The media have pushed a pro-global warming, “net-zero” message to their readers. But it’s not having much luck, perhaps because the public has greater faith in what Trump says than what the media says.

Indeed, a recent YouGov survey found that only 29% of Americans say they have a fair amount of “trust in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly,” compared to 44% for Trump.

Trump has effectively killed former President Joe Biden’s goal of “zero net emissions” by 2050. Instead, he’s pursuing drilling on hundreds of millions of acres of federal land, eased restrictions on appliance use, and withdrawn from the Paris Accords on climate, among other actions.

The goal: restore carbon-based fuels, which made the Industrial Revolution possible and removed billions of people from grinding poverty, to the center of our economy and to restore strong economic growth and low inflation.

These goals, of course, run afoul of the so-called global consensus on climate change, which Trump is intent on weakening, if not outright destroying.

As Trump wrote in his Executive Order withdrawing from the Paris Accords:

In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives. Moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.”

In effect, Trump has declared the enormously costly war on climate change to be dead, while the era of fossil fuels to be very much alive. Whether they like it or not, those on the other side of this debate are likely to find that Americans are far more receptive Trump’s message than to theirs, as the I&I/TIPP poll demonstrates.

I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past six presidential elections.

Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.