How’s that 35+ years of spreading awareness working? How about declaring that the debate is over?
Yale survey indicates Mainers losing interest in climate change
Big majorities of Maine residents believe in global warming, think it is caused by human activities, and that it is harmful.
But public interest and concern with global warming slipped in 2025, according to new estimates from the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication.
Senior program researcher Jennifer Marlon said waning attention to climate is a national trend.
“The numbers are not statistically significant, but when you look state by state, year by year in the recent time, there are declines,” Marlon said. “That is consistent with the decline in media coverage, the decline in politics, and leaders and decision makers talking about the issue.”
In 2025, 68% of people in Maine believed global warming is happening, a 4-point slide from the year before, according to the Yale projections.
There were similar decreases in the number of people who were worried about global warming, thought it was harmful and caused by human activity.
You can only scaremonger people for so long before they start losing interest, and, of course, really, the interest is mostly in theory, not practice. How many are actually living the climate cult life?
Marlon said “climate hushing” — avoiding or downplaying the issue on the part of corporations, media outlets and politicians — mean people are seeing and hearing less about global warming. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other parts of the world are facing bouts of dangerous heat, wildfires and other disasters made worse by a warming climate.
Marlon said in 2025 the proportion of people nationally who talk about global warming with their family and friends or see mentions of it in the media at least once a week hit the lowest point in the program’s 17-year history.
The media doesn’t need to talk about heavy metal for metal heads to care about it.
