What Americans Actually Think About Energy and the Climate

There is a wealth of information to be explored in the modern era, and there’s no shortage of new ideas or contrary viewpoints to be discovered. With all of this information right at our fingertips, it is assumed that many people are becoming more open-minded to new perspectives.

However, in actuality, the converse is true: modern media creates an echo chamber.

Facebook and Google both create information vaccuums: by taking your past activities in account, they will display “news” that is geared to provide confirmation bias. In other words, you will see posts in your newsfeed and search results that tend to confirm your pre-existing beliefs, rather than challenge them.

One way to challenge this?

Instead of just assuming what other people believe, it’s worth it to actively search for data that provides a broad and unbiased perspective. Then, interpret and internalize the data, and you’ll have a much more representative idea of what people think.

What Americans Actually Think About Energy

In today’s infographic, which uses data from a survey by the AP-NORC and the Energy Policy Institute, we get a summary of opinions on energy and climate change from a nationally representative sample of 1,096 Americans.

An analysis of the survey data helps us understand what Americans actually think, rather than what we assume they may think.

Here are some of the most interesting tidbits:

• 65% of Americans think that climate change is a problem that the U.S. government should address, and 10% of Americans believe climate change is not happening.
• 42% of Americans aren’t willing to pay even just $1 per month to combat climate change.
• Americans largely underestimate fracking’s role in providing for the energy mix. Only 1 in 5 Americans correctly say that it produces two-thirds of U.S. natural gas.
• Most Americans don’t hold strong opinions on fracking – but for those that do, people that oppose fracking outnumber those in favor of fracking by a 2:1 ratio.
• Only a quarter of Americans think the U.S. government will fulfill its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• 54% of Americans favor federal regulation to decrease coal consumption, but that number drops to 45% if jobs will be lost.

It’s always interesting to get an in-depth and representative perspective of what people believe, rather than making false assumptions based on what can be seen on social feeds, news sites, or search results.

Did any of the numbers from the survey surprise you?