Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Report Summary

This report is based on findings from a survey of GitHub users conducted jointly by GitHub, Inc. and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC). Interview dates: June 30 – August 9, 2026. Interviews: 1,039 GitHub users (18+) in the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. All questions were administered online in English using the Qualtrics platform.

Portions of this survey use validated items from Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM), a nationally representative U.S. survey conducted jointly by YPCCC and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. These shared items make it possible to compare GitHub users’ responses to estimates from the U.S. general population, with the sampling caveats described in the Survey Method appendix.

The purpose of the survey is to establish a baseline measure of software developers’ climate change beliefs and risk perceptions, their views on AI’s environmental impact, their perceptions of software efficiency as a lever for sustainability, and their expectations for employers, cloud providers, governments, and GitHub in addressing environmental impact.

Research team

GitHub Customer Research Team: Grace Vorreuter, Paull Young.

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: Marija Verner, Jenn Marlon, Emily Goddard, Jennifer Carman, Seth Rosenthal, Anthony Leiserowitz.

For all media and other inquiries, please email:

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication:

Emily Richards (e.richards@yale.edu) and Eric Fine (eric.fine@yale.edu)

GitHub, Inc.: 

Paull Young (paullyoung@github.com) and Lerin Jensen (lerinjensen@github.com)