Report · Feb 18, 2020
Climate Activism: Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors – November 2019
By Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Parrish Bergquist, Abel Gustafson, Matthew Ballew and Matthew Goldberg
Filed under: Behaviors & Actions, Beliefs & Attitudes and Policy & Politics
1. Attitudes About Climate Activists
1.1. About half of Americans support climate activists.
About half of Americans (53%) say they support climate activists who urge elected officials to take action to reduce global warming. This includes a large majority of Democrats (84%), half of Independents (50%), and about one in four Republicans (23%).
Only about one in five Americans (17%) oppose climate activists, and three in ten (29%) neither support nor oppose them (see Data Tables, p. 20).
1.2. Nearly four in ten Americans identify with climate activists.
Although about half of Americans support climate activists (see previous section), fewer Americans identify with climate activists. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say they identify with climate activists who urge elected officials to take action to reduce global warming either “a great deal” (15%) or “a moderate amount” (23%). A majority of Americans identify either “a little” (22%) or “not at all” (39%; see Data Tables, p. 20).
Democrats (58%) are most likely to identify with climate activists, while fewer Independents (41%) and very few Republicans (13%) do so.
