How Americans came to their senses about climate change

Hurricanes and heat are changing hearts and minds

Hurricane destruction.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Angel Valentin/Getty Images)

For a long time climate change felt far off to many Americans. Though people saw the pictures of melting ice caps and heard the warnings from Al Gore and 97 percent of climate scientists, they never truly felt this long-term environmental trend would threaten their own lives. Maybe it would affect future generations or people in the global south, where climate change will have especially deleterious effects, but not their own communities, not them.

So not only did countless Americans treat global warming like some minor threat that wouldn't hurt them in any major way, but many simply denied that it was even happening. This attitude was promoted by fossil fuel companies and special interests that funded propaganda questioning the scientific consensus, as well as the politicians who supported their views. Thus over the past few decades, the Republican Party — the party that once founded the Environmental Protection Agency — became the party of climate change denialism.

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Conor Lynch

Conor Lynch is a freelance journalist living in New York City. He has written for The New Republic, Salon, and Alternet.