Americans may have finally accepted that people are one of the major drivers of climate change. A new U.S. Gallup poll shows that Americans are much more worried about global warming now than they have been before.
In the latest poll, researchers conducted telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,019 adults who were aged 18 and older. All of them lived in the U.S. and the District of Columbia. All reported margins of sampling error also included computed design effects for weighting.
The new poll shows that Americans are taking climate change more seriously than at any other time in the past eight years. In fact, a total of 64 percent of Americans say that they are worried a "great deal" or a "fair amount" about global warming.
It's possible that the new poll results could be due to the past winter, which was one of the warmest on record in the U.S. In fact, Gallup noticed a slightly increase in the percentage of Americans who believe that the effects of global warming have already begun.
That's not all the researchers found. A good indicator of a country's stance on global warming is whether the population believes that climate change will eventually pose a serious threat to them or their way of life. In this case, 41 percent of Americans say that it will; that's up from 37 percent in 2015.
In addition, a total of 65 percent of Americans now say that increases in Earth's temperature are primarily due to human activities rather than natural causes. This is a huge leap from the previous year and is four points above the previous high of 61 percent in 2007.
It's not all surprising that Americans are having a change of heart after this winter. In February, the U.S. experienced extremely warm temperatures. The western part of the country was particularly warm, with eight states having the warmest February on record. Overall, the winter contiguous U.S. temperature was 2.1 degrees above the 20th century average.
The new findings are important when it comes to tackling climate change in the future. As more and more Americans believe that humans are the cause of global warming, it may be easier to put policies in place that can help mitigate this issue.
