Survey finds 66 percent worried about climate change even amid coronavirus

Americans’ concern over climate change has not dropped amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey.

A report released Tuesday by Climate Change in the American Mind, written by researchers at Yale University and George Mason University, found that the issue of climate change remains at near historic high levels of priority despite the ongoing public health crisis.

The report found that a record-tying 73 percent of respondents said they think global warming is happening. 

The same survey found that 66 percent of those polled said they are at least “somewhat” worried about global warming, with 26 percent saying they are “very worried” about it. 

A record-tying 62 percent of respondents said they understand that global warming is mostly human-caused, according to the report, and just 29 percent said they think it is mostly due to natural changes in the environment. 

Researchers said they were prepared to find a “dramatically reduced level of concern” about climate change in the survey due to a theory of finite pool of worry. A separate report released by Climate Change in the American Mind in April found large majorities of Americans were worried about the health care system and the economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Researchers noted, however, that while the level of concern over climate change remained high in the survey, it does not prove the finite pool of worry hypothesis correct or incorrect ,as they did not formally test it. 

The report is based on surveys with 1,029 adults and was conducted April 7-17, when most of the country was under stay-at-home orders. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.