Mother Jones thinks this is what will finally take Trump down, an issue that has, yet again, essentially been relegated to the back burner
Trump’s Biggest Vulnerability Is His Climate Change Denial
A little more than 10 years ago, Donald Trump and his children signed a letter that ran as a full-page ad in the New York Times. In it, they urged global leaders to reach an ambitious climate change deal at the annual United Nations conference.
The position didn’t hold. Months later, Trump said he thought Al Gore should be stripped of his Nobel Prize because of an unusually cold winter. Since then, Trump has tried on many different excuses for ignoring climate change, from calling it an outright hoax on Twitter to claiming in an Axios interview that it’s part of a natural cycle that will “go back like this,†he said, making an ocean-wave gesture with his hand.
But most Americans don’t agree with that assessment. For the last year, there’s been a clear trend in polls finding that climate change is Trump’s most unpopular position, outranking health care, immigration and foreign policy as the issue he gets the worst marks on from registered voters.
A Politico/Morning Consult poll released in late January—smack in the middle of the impeachment trial—asked 2,000 voters about Trump’s performance on a number of issues ranging from jobs, economy, and terrorism to trade, climate, immigration, foreign relations, health care, and draining the swamp. They were the least impressed with climate: More than half—54 percent—gave Trump a D or F, while just 21 percent gave him an A or B. (snip)
Another poll in North Carolina in 2018 showed a spike in Republican voters’ concern about climate change following back-to-back direct hits hurricanes. The American Conservation Coalition, a group representing younger conservatives, has done its own polling of 1,000 voters nationwide under age 35—77 percent of whom said climate change was important to them and that they want to see more solutions from their party.
Of course, this all breaks down on two things. First, when you put ‘climate change’ on a list of actual concerns, it drops to the bottom. Kitchen table issues blow it away. Second, when you start asking people how much they’re willing to pay to “solve” Hotcoldwetdry, Americans are very reticent to pay much out of their own pockets. The majority aren’t willing to pay more than $10 a month.
People may care about ‘climate change’Â in theory, but, in practice? Not so much.
