The number of U.S. adults affirming that human actions are entirely or mostly responsible for climate change has increased, according to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC).
In a report published Jan. 22, AP-NORC revealed that 60 percent of U.S. adults affirmed this position, up from 55 percent in August 2017.
Respondents stating that climate change is caused equally by humans and natural processes declined four points to 28 percent, while those asserting that climate change is entirely or mostly due to natural processes remained at 12 percent.
When asked to explain their views on climate change, 50 percent of U.S. adults cited extreme weather events as contributing a great deal / a lot to their perspective.
While 71 percent affirmed that climate change is taking place, only 49 percent said it was very or extremely important to them personally.
This was the lowest of the other five issues included in the survey – health care (81 percent), the economy (76 percent), terrorism (67 percent), immigration (55 percent) and energy policy (53 percent).
Similarly, climate change received the highest percentage of responses that said it was not at all / slightly important to them (24 percent).
By comparison, 18 percent of respondents described their feelings about immigration this way, followed by energy policy (13 percent), terrorism (11 percent), the economy (5 percent) and health care (5 percent).
A majority (57 percent) supports a hypothetical $1 monthly fee on their utility bill to help mitigate climate change and its negative impacts.
Those figures change significantly as the fee increases, with 30 percent or fewer respondents approving any monthly fee of $10 or higher.
The sampling error for the survey is plus-or-minus 3.9 percent.
The full report is available here.
