On the day Donald Trump declared he was "proudly" committed to ensuring no new wind turbines would be built in the United States, Yale University's climate polling was recording something the president's rhetoric seemed to ignore: roughly two-thirds of Americans told researchers they were worried about the climate crisis. That figure has barely shifted across news cycles dominated by inflation, conflict in the Middle East, and the turbulence of the 2024 election campaign. The gap between what Washington says and what the public actually thinks has rarely been wider. Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale's Programme on Climate Change Communication, is direct about what the election did and did not mean.

"The 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change — Americans believe in climate change, worry about climate change and support action on climate change," he said, adding that none of those attitudes changed before, during, or after polling day. What has changed is the volume of public conversation. Media organisations including the Washington Post, NPR, and CBS have cut specialist climate journalism positions, and the cumulative effect is a country that is experiencing record heatwaves and prolonged droughts while reading about them less than at any point in recent memory. Leiserowitz describes the result as a "spiral of climate silence" — a feedback loop in which reduced coverage leads to fewer public conversations, which in turn signals to editors and politicians that the topic carries less weight than it does.

A majority of US voters, Yale has found, now connect rising household costs directly to climate-driven instability in global oil markets, yet that link is rarely made explicit in mainstream political debate.