The Global Warming Panic Is Subsiding
Poll after poll shows the issue falling in status as a political priority, in America and abroad.
The world’s treatment of global warming as a top-tier political priority may be subsiding, if recent polls are any indication.
A recent Swedish survey highlights how “environment/climate concerns” declined from a top issue for 51 percent of young women and 34 percent of young men in 2019 to just 15 and 13 percent, respectively, in 2025. Swedish kids’ interest in climate also cratered — once considered a top issue, it’s now only in the bottom half of the 23 concerns listed, well behind health, education, and safety. That’s a massive change for the famously progressive country — the same nation which spawned climate activist Greta Thunberg, who herself has since moved onto other issues.
The same result is backed up in other polls. Interest in global warming as a “top issue” in the entire European Union fell from 35 percent of all voters in 2019 to just 1 percent in 2025, according to Eurobarometer. The reality of living with higher energy prices in the name of shifting to ostensibly greener energy sources and making do without the convenience of disposable plastic products (which were heavily restricted in 2021 and will be completely banned in the EU by 2030) may be affecting the public’s views.
While the continent’s climate change crackdown did very little to actually fix the environment or reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it did do a great deal to wreck energy security, shutter industry, and weaken Europe’s strategic position.
Similar skepticism is taking hold in the U.S. electorate.
Only 46 percent of Americans view global warming as a “very serious problem,” down from 56 percent in 2021, according to a 2024 Monmouth University Poll. That survey showed a shocking 17-point decline among the key 18- to 34-year-old demographic, which also featured a stunning 20-point decline, compared with 2018, in the percentage of young people “supporting government action on climate activities.”
This is significant, as historically environmentalists drew considerable support from young people and frequently portrayed their organizations as youth-led and hip.
The worldwide decline in climate change alarmism does not seem to merely be a case of “crisis overload,” where other worries such as pandemics, geopolitical tensions, or economic anxiety dilute focus on global warming. Instead, this fading “climate panic” suggests a shift in public priorities, possibly influenced by economic challenges, energy security concerns, and a growing skepticism toward the urgency of climate policies.
2025 Gallup polling found that a clear plurality of Americans, 41 percent, say that the media “generally exaggerates” the seriousness of global warming — a notable uptick from the 33 percent who agreed with that statement in 2018. This is largely driven by Republicans and independents, 78 percent and 41 percent of whom agree that global warming has been exaggerated. In contrast, Democrats have remained stable in their views, with only 6 percent agreeing that the media exaggerates on global warming.
“[Americans’] personal worry about the problem is flat, and slightly more now believe the news exaggerates the seriousness of the problem,” wrote Gallup analyst Lydia Saad. “Heavy news coverage of several catastrophic environmental events in the past year could be contributing to these patterns.”
Support for diverting financial resources to combat global warming, such as through higher taxes, has collapsed even further.
Americans’ willingness to pay even a token fee of $1 a month to end global warming has sharply declined from 57 percent in 2018 to only 38 percent in 2025, according to polling by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.
We’ve known for almost a decade that Americans would only be willing to spend token amounts to end global warming.
That 2016 number fell to 39 percent when respondents were asked if they’d be willing to spend just $10 a month to stave off the alleged environmental catastrophe. At $20 a month, the public opposed such a measure by a 2-to-1 margin, with objections rising to 5-to-1 at $50 a month.
As I pointed out at the time, that number is far below the monthly cost of what Americans were already paying for then-President Obama’s Clean Power Plan — projected to cost a staggering $41 billion annually, equating to about $10.74 a month for each American.
Obama’s plan would have almost no impact on global warming, only avoiding 0.019° Celsius of net warming by the year 2100, according to analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute, which relied on models created by the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s a temperature decrease so small it couldn’t even be detected or measured, and would not even be close to the amount necessary to actually cool the planet.
It appears likely that falling public support for global warming is based on a combination of increasingly and obviously unhinged environmentalist tactics, as well as the continued failure to come to pass of the endless predictions of climate apocalypse made by activists and promoted in the media.
Climate scientists openly say they feel pressured to misrepresent their research in order to be published in scientific journals. Additionally, almost three-quarters of climate scientists say they want to stop or reverse economic growth in the name of global warming.
But the endless predictions of environmental apocalypses that never occur are probably the most striking element of the global warming movement.
In 2018, then-teenage activist Greta Thunberg promoted on social media Harvard University professor James Anderson’s warning that “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” Five years later, when that did not occur, Thunberg quietly deleted her tweet instead of acknowledging her failed prognostication.
Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed in 2019 that his $5 trillion spending plan could prevent the Earth from becoming an uninhabitable wasteland over the next twelve years. There’s no doubt in my mind that Earth in 2031 will be habitable, despite global warming.
Similarly, in 2006, Al Gore claimed that unless his preferred global warming policy measures were implemented “within the next ten years,” the world would “reach a point of no return . . .” — a point of no return that came and went nearly ten years ago.
In 1989, a senior United Nations official even told the Associated Press that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels” if extreme government action was not taken by the year 2000. Furthermore, all the way back in 1970, Harvard biologist George Wald warned that civilization would end within 15 to 30 years “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” of which he cited pollution and alleged overpopulation as prime examples.
Obviously, none of these predicted disasters occurred.
Clearly the endless predictions of apocalypses that never quite manifest should shake the faith of global warming zealots. Countless predictions that the environmental end is nigh have been a staple of media and politics for decades.
It would be extremely difficult to imagine that such an endless stream of failed doom-mongering wouldn’t eventually impact the public’s desire to take future such predictions at face value. Even Bill Gates, historically very keen on the issue, has recently softened his views, saying that global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and should be dealt with “in proportion.”
It’s clear that the zeitgeist has definitely changed when it comes to global warming’s political salience.
Comments
Post a Comment