Biden’s environmental record: Who cares?
- Wall St. Journal poll: 3% of young voters call ‘climate change’ their top issue
- Yale poll: 60% mostly unfamiliar with Inflation Reduction Act green spending
- Harvard poll: Just 39% of young voters trust president on climate change
US President Joe Biden during an event at the Intel Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona, US, on Wednesday, March 20, 2024. The US will award Intel Corp. $8.5 billion in grants and as much as $11 billion in loans to help fund an expansion of its semiconductor factories, marking the largest award from a program designed to reinvigorate the domestic chip industry. Photographer: Cassidy Araiza/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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(NewsNation) — While President Joe Biden has arguably done more to address climate change than any other president, recent surveys show that most Americans just don’t care — especially younger voters.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll asked voters in seven swing states to rate the most important issues. Just 2% said “climate change.” That same survey found just 3% of voters ages 18 to 34 called climate change their top issue.
A Harvard Youth study found that just 39% of younger voters say they trust the president’s handling of climate change.
Meanwhile, some Democrats are pushing Biden to do more, saying his work to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels isn’t enough.
“Will (a second Biden term) be an administration that takes climate change much more seriously now than these last few years?” asks Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “The arc of the curve is totally insufficient to meet the challenge,” he told Politico.
Biden’s environmental record leaves plenty for both supporters and opponents to love or hate. The Inflation Reduction Act contains about $1 trillion in tax credits, grants and loans for clean energy.
He’s paused new permits for natural gas exports pending a new evaluation of whether the environmental cost of exporting natural gas has much of a positive impact on greenhouse gas reduction.
But he’s also approved a number of new fossil fuel projects, including a new pipeline in West Virginia and the massive Willow project in Alaska.
The political balance may be crucial for Biden’s reelection. While young climate-centric voters won’t shift to former President Donald Trump, they could sit out the election or back a third-party candidate.
And backing tighter environmental policies during the campaign could fuel Trump’s stand that Biden’s agenda is putting the U.S. economy in danger.
The Biden camp’s political solution may be just letting people know about specific programs the Inflation Reduction Act funds. A poll by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication found 60% of voters asked knew “a little” or “nothing at all” about the law.
But, after reading a brief description of it, more than 70% said they supported the act.