By the FAU Center for Environmental Studies
Floridians are more convinced that climate change is happening than Americans as a whole and strongly support steps to address its impact, according to a new Florida Atlantic University survey.
The latest edition of the Florida Climate Resilience Survey found that 90% of respondents believe climate change is happening. The finding is consistent with eight previous surveys conducted by FAU’s Center for Environmental Studies (CES), which found that 86% to 92% of respondents had that belief.
In contrast, a recent Yale University survey found that 74% of Americans as a whole think climate change is happening.
“Floridians might be more likely to believe climate change is happening due to their experiences with hurricanes and other extreme weather,” said Dr. Colin Polsky, the founding director of FAU’s School of Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sustainability (ECOS).
The survey also found that Floridians overwhelmingly support more government action to address the impacts of climate change, with 69% support for state action and 70% support for federal action.
“The obvious hypothesis to test is that recent personal experiences with weather events increase support for addressing climate change, regardless of party affiliation,” Polsky said.
The survey’s data appear to support this notion with 60% of Floridians reporting some level of negative impact by strong winds from a hurricane or tornado in the past 12 months, and 45% of Floridians reporting some level of negative impact from flooding in the past 12 months.
The survey did find a slight decline in statewide belief in the human-caused nature of climate change, which dropped to 57% from 65% since a March survey. But Polsky said the current survey’s overall findings suggest that support for action on climate change will strengthen as the state’s population continues to boom, with Florida adding more than 400,000 new residents last year alone.
The last two editions of the survey found that newer residents exhibit higher levels of belief in human-caused climate change than people who have lived in Florida longer than five years. Polsky believes these trends might explain the state’s investment in recent years of more than $1 billion in climate adaptation projects.
“It’s fair to conclude that state politicians feel insulated from backlash if they support actions to address climate change,” he said. “Since the state is so dominated by the Republican Party, it makes sense to consider calling Florida the first Republican state to openly fight climate change.”
CES has conducted the Florida Climate Resilience Survey since October 2019 and now does so twice each year. The latest edition of the survey was conducted in English and Spanish from Sept. 22 to 28. The sample consisted of 1,400 Floridians, age 18 and older, with a survey margin of error of +/- 2.53 percentage points. The data were collected using an online panel provided by GreatBlue Research. Responses for the entire sample were weighted to adjust for age, race, income, education and gender, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys. It is important to remember that subsets carry higher margins of error.
For more information, survey results and full cross-tabulations, visit www.ces.fau.edu/ces-bepi/ or contact Colin Polsky, Ph.D., at cpolsky@fau.edu.
Editor’s note: The Center for Environmental Studies manages The Invading Sea.
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A majority of Floridians may believe in human-caused climate change, but it must be low on their list of priorities considering the climate change-denialists they keep electing to statewide office.