Even amid what seems like a never-ending series of deadly and destructive climate extremes across the country, including heat waves in the Southwest, wildfires in California and hurricanes and flooding in the Southeast, social and political scientists say climate is still not a major issue for U.S. voters. Despite the deaths and destruction that Hurricanes Milton and Helene inflicted on North Carolina and Florida just a month before Election Day, the storms are unlikely to swing many votes, the researchers report. “I watched for many years the hypothesis that hurricanes or other events would move the needle on public opinion, but saw little evidence of response to individual events,” said Lawrence Hamilton, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire who researches public views of science, the environment, climate change and human-environment interactions. He said there was a slow upward trend in climate awareness and response through 2020 that may have been interrupted by the COVID pandemic, but he said the data suggests that single extreme events did not have much of an effect on voters. Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season. Increasing public awareness of global warming and its prioritization as an issue reflected a cumulative effect from climate coverage in the news. In addition to extreme weather and disasters, attention to climate issues spiked in the runup to the annual United Nations climate summits, Hamilton explained. “I hope recent events change more minds and expect that many other climate-concerned people hope the same,” he said. That could change as extremes happen more frequently, but the studies he conducted from 2010 to 2020 don’t show the needle moving in response to climate disasters, he added. “Unfortunately, the post-COVID landscape has introduced a worse possibility: that is, to blame extreme events on conspiracies,” he said. “[Former... |