American Climate Policy Opinions

In Climate Insights 2024: American Understanding of Climate Change, we showed that huge majorities of Americans believe that the earth has been warming, that the warming has been caused by human activity, that warming poses a significant threat to the nation and the world—especially to future generations—and that governments, businesses, and individuals should be taking steps to address it.In this report, we turn to specific federal government opportunities to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions, often referred to as climate change mitigation. Policies to accomplish this goal fall into several categories, including:Consumer incentives that reward people for taking steps that reduce their use of fossil fuels and, by extension, reduce their carbon footprintCarbon pricing policies that require emitters to pay for their carbon emissions, such as a carbon tax (which would require carbon emitters to pay a tax for each ton of carbon they emit), or a cap-and-trade program (which would require businesses to have a permit for each ton of carbon they emit)Regulations that require manufacturers to increase energy efficiency of their productsTax incentives that encourage manufacturers to increase the energy efficiency of their productsThis 2024 survey asked Americans about their opinions on a wide array of such policies, which allows us not only to assess current opinions, but to track changes in those opinions over the past two decades through comparisons with responses to comparable questions asked in earlier national surveys.