Most Americans fear global warming. Here's why few discuss it

A crushing "spiral of silence" keeps Americans from discussing the threat of climate change, a new study has found.

The findings, published on Thursday in PLOS Climate, highlight a dynamic that cuts to the heart of the country’s failure to take significant action to slow climate change.

“When we don't hear an opinion, or we don't hear our thoughts out there, we assume we're in the minority, and we become sort of afraid to speak out about it,” said lead author Margaret Orr, who studies communication at George Mason.

This silence, in turn, helps contribute to a lack of significant action — both individually and socially, the researchers argue.

The study comes in the wake of findings that the burning of fossil fuels was driving key earth systems toward collapse by midcentury.

It also comes amid a broad assault by the Trump administration on American climate action — one that has seen officials cast fears of planetary heating as a fringe, minority concern.

The administration announced mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of the principal agencies that keep Americans apprised of the onrushing damage caused by planetary heating. 

Russell Vought, head of the Trump Office of Management and Budget, has called the Office of Climate Research, which the administration is seeking to eliminate, the source of NOAA’s “climate alarmism.”

The administration has also indicated that it intends to cut 65 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, and is considering eliminating the agency's science arm.

President Trump himself has previously referred to climate activists as "alarmists" and called climate change a "hoax." 

While Thursday’s paper does not name Trump, it points to the possibility of a broad chilling effect as the sources of cutting-edge climate data go dark.

The lack of such data in the public discourse, the researchers wrote, could worsen an existing dynamic in which those concerned about climate change may be unaware that their fears are widely shared. 

A majority of Americans see climate change as a “major threat” to the country’s well-being, per a 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center.

But nearly two-thirds of Americans “rarely or never” discuss climate change with friends or family, the PLOS study found.

Attitudes toward the issue have shifted in opposite directions among the two political parties. Climate action used to be bipartisan: In 1988, then-Republican candidate George H. W. Bush made addressing global warming a campaign issue.

Even as heat waves and hurricanes surged between 1998 and 2008, however, the number of Republicans who believed the effects of global warming were already happening fell by 20 percent, according to Gallup polling.

Over the same period, the share of Republicans who believed climate change posed a serious threat fell by a third. And the proportion of those​ who believed news accounts exaggerated the threat doubled.

Democrats have moved in the opposite direction during that time, Gallup found — pointing at the role in-group conversations play in driving support for or opposition to climate action.

Orr’s study also found that even as silence about climate change can spiral into deeper fears of speaking out, speaking about the issue can drive a spiral toward further discussion and action — and that individual conversations can play a surprisingly large role.

Her team found that a few key factors drive people to speak to their friends and family about climate change.

First, people have to believe that a heating planet poses risk to themselves and their families.

Second, concern about climate — and willingness to take even small actions to slow it — must be seen as normal in their friend group.

Finally, they must see and hear the issue being discussed around them — both personally and in the media — and know they aren’t in the minority.

Such conversations, Orr said, let people know "they're not in the minority, that most people in the U.S. want climate action in some way, shape or form — and that most people are at least a little bit concerned."

Once those small-scale discussions happen, Orr argued, they can turn to large-scale impact.

Cliche as it may sound, “the more individuals do something — turn up the air conditioning a few degrees in the summer, walk, carpool — those little actions really do build up,” she said.

Why? Because seeing friends and family take inconvenient steps to slow climate change pushes against the sense of pervasive silence.

It also helps build public consensus for the idea that climate is a topic that matters to voters — and for mass action, from voting to rallies to marches.

In that way, one-on-one discussions lead to small actions, which together “helps with bringing public opinion to where it needs to be for the government to take that next step,” Orr said.