{"id":805,"date":"2026-06-23T19:21:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T19:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2026-06-23T19:21:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T19:21:36","slug":"america-isnt-sweating-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Summer has begun\u2014which is to say, wildfires in the West are chasing residents from their homes, the snowpack has dwindled to near-record lows in several states, drought is spreading, and temperatures are regularly exploring new heights. Yet America does not seem to be sweating climate change. You could call it \u201cclimate hushing,\u201d as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others do, or a \u201cworry gap,\u201d as one study has. Whatever you call it, America\u2019s interest in talking about climate change is at an ebb.<\/p>\n

Read more The Screwworm Problem Will Get Worse Before It Can Get Better<\/a><\/p>\n

Certainly, the Trump administration has made a point of disregarding climate change. Yet when President Trump made similar moves in his first term, he was met with a surge of resistance. Environmentalists and Democratic politicians formed their own climate alliances and pushed through state and local laws designed to take carbon out of the American economies. At the time, Jay Inslee, then the Washington governor, said, \u201cWe governors are going to step into this cockpit and fly the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Democrats and even climate activists are acting as if fighting to slow global warming, let alone campaigning on it, is pass\u00e9. As gas prices soared during the Iran war, blue-state governors have given fossil fuels another look, pushing the message of affordability, debating new gas pipelines, and putting off, in some cases, commitments to cut emissions. California\u2019s frontrunner for governor, Xavier Becerra, who took campaign donations from oil companies, has not committed to phasing out gas cars as the state has planned; New York Governor Kathy Hochul rolled back the state\u2019s landmark 2019 climate law. Congressional Democrats, who need to win seats during the midterms, are focused on economic issues. \u201cLook at the Senate map,\u201d Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, a moderate Democratic think tank, told me. \u201cI mean, Alaska, Texas, Iowa. These are not places where anyone with brain cells would say: Run on blocking fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the climate activists who came of age during Trump\u2019s first term have since broadened their portfolio. The most famous one, Greta Thunberg, posts about Gaza and ICE raids alongside her critiques of the fossil-fuel industry; the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led group that championed the Green New Deal, has pivoted to defeating authoritarianism as a prerequisite for passing climate legislation, Aru Shiney-Ajay, the group\u2019s executive director, told me. Her organization was still hopeful, she said, early in the second Trump administration, that they could mobilize support among Republicans to save some of the funding for renewable energy and climate-related projects. But they quickly saw that wouldn\u2019t happen. The Trump administration has pushed to expand oil drilling, including in sensitive Alaskan wilderness and California coastal waters; to block offshore wind farms; to stop regulating greenhouse-gas pollution, an effort EPA administrator Lee Zeldin described last year as \u201cdriving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate-change religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Democrats and environmentalists have challenged such actions in court, the public hasn\u2019t made much noise about them, and some advocates fear that these kinds of rollbacks could be gathering their own quiet momentum, even in Democratic strongholds, Jon Binder, the executive director of the Model Climate Laws Initiative at Columbia University, told me.<\/p>\n

Some environmentalists are more optimistic that the ever-improving economics of clean energy can keep tamping down emissions. They see the need to expand the electricity grid\u2014if mainly to feed the hyper-scale data centers\u2014as an opportunity to add wind and solar energy. And yet, the people who think most about climate seem immobilized. \u201cIt\u2019s the responsibility of the environmental community to elucidate what\u2019s going on,\u201d Kathryn Phillips, a longtime California environmental advocate, told me. \u201cBut somehow they\u2019re stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people still trying to make noise about climate worry that this phase of \u201cclimate hushing\u201d doesn\u2019t actually reflect what Americans want. Voters care deeply about the growing risks of floods and wildfires, Whitehouse told me, and about the rising cost of homeowner\u2019s insurance and the threat that poses to the wider economy. But how politicians talk about these issues matters, he said: You\u2019re getting screwed, and your bills are going up<\/em> because of the fossil-fuel industry<\/em> is a \u201cmuch more powerful and salient argument\u201d than setting future climate targets without a way to get to them.<\/p>\n

Voters in Rhode Island, where Whitehouse is from, are not exactly on the same page about these questions as voters in, say, Texas, but he may be right that Americans want something more from their leaders on this issue. Jennifer Marlon, a climate scientist at Yale University, which has long polled Americans about the climate, told me that a majority of people do want their politicians to take action on climate change.<\/strong> \u201cWhat\u2019s changing is leadership,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of leaders are thinking, Oh, I\u2019m going to get in trouble if I talk about it<\/em>, or, It\u2019s too polarizing<\/em>. It\u2019s turning into this vicious circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Atlantic Trivia: Pizza<\/a><\/p>\n

Fewer people\u2014in rich countries, at least\u2014appear to be dwelling on the perils of a warming planet. In the U.S., just more than half of the respondents\u201451 percent\u2014to the new Lloyd\u2019s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, conducted by Gallup, considered climate \u201ca very serious threat\u201d over the next 20 years. The poll also found that people tended to underestimate how worried their peers were. Only 10 percent of Americans thought most other people here saw climate as a real threat. And that makes sense, on some level. If only a bare majority of Americans are that worried about climate, even those who are might reasonably question the country\u2019s collective concern.<\/p>\n

Marlon, the Yale scientist, has found, too, that in much of the country, people don\u2019t worry enough about the real threats they face. One of her recent studies mapped heat risk across the country, as determined by the CDC, and compared it with survey results about how worried people are about extreme heat. Apart from the Southwest, where the lethal dangers of heat are well documented and discussed, the level of concern among the public in much of the country lags behind the expert assessments of the risk.<\/p>\n

Few places, her study found, face a greater threat from heat while residents worry about it less than a swath of rural counties in Oregon. Three of the top 10 counties in the country with the greatest \u201cworry gap\u201d were in the state. (Virginia also had three in that group.) The finding made me wonder what it feels like out there, where climate threats abound but nobody stresses too much. A place like that seemed pretty in sync with our country at the moment.<\/p>\n

I drove out to Gilliam County (population 2,000) last week\u2014No. 4 on the \u201cworry gap\u201d list\u2014on what happened to be the hottest day of the year so far. Thick smoke from a wildfire drifted over the Columbia River into this swath of north-central Oregon. (By the next evening, authorities had ordered more than 10,000 people to evacuate as another fire burned through parts of Spokane; one person died.) Temperature records would break that day in Portland and other cities across the Pacific Northwest. The state had just declared a drought emergency for Gilliam, along with nearly half of Oregon\u2019s counties.<\/p>\n

Amid the dry-land wheat fields and sagebrush hills where Trump won handily the past three elections, the residents I spoke with were keenly attuned to the conditions of the soil and the changes in the air. In Condon, the county seat, Gibb Wilkins, the interim city administrator and public-works superintendent, told me he was focused on trying to get the community to conserve water to avoid mandatory restrictions. The winter\u2019s scant snow has stressed water supplies across the West; Condon did not run its snowplows once, when it normally might do so a dozen times. (Wilkins is also the town\u2019s nighttime snowplow driver.) His public-works crews that day were out mowing grass in case they needed to build proper firebreaks later this summer. These employees are older\u2014the town\u2019s median age is more than 60\u2014and he\u2019s had to pull some of them off the job on particularly hot days. \u201cWe\u2019re not cooling off like we used to at night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If people did not express worry to an official survey taker, he suggested, it probably has to do with the hardiness and resolve of the residents, many of them farmers who have weathered a lifetime of lashing from the elements. \u201cA lot of people here survived the farm downturns of the \u201980s, and they just see it as another obstacle that they\u2019ve got to overcome,\u201d Wilkins said.<\/p>\n

So maybe people just adapt without complaining. With the morning temperature in the mid-80s and rising, Mark Griffith was kneeling on the patio outside the Elks Club, spreading concrete. The 66-year-old cowboy and construction worker has spent a life outside here. \u201cI enjoy it,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt gets a little hot for moving cows around and stuff.\u201d He\u2019d noticed the fire season seems to keep starting earlier, he said, in June, or even May. And he\u2019d noticed that the four-foot snowfalls he\u2019d seen as a kid, back in the \u201960s and \u201970s, had disappeared. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely seeing a change in the environment, for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat causes it? I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m sure man caused a lot of it, you know. We ruin about everything we touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more America\u2019s Big Mistake in Iran<\/a><\/p>\n

He knelt back to his work, positioning a metal pole. He was building a sunshade.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

However worried Americans should be, we\u2019re not that concerned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"However worried Americans should be, we\u2019re not that concerned.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805\"},\"wordCount\":1632,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Planet\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805\",\"name\":\"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":625},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=805#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Commercial Relocation Pros\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros","og_description":"However worried Americans should be, we\u2019re not that concerned.","og_url":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805","og_site_name":"Commercial Relocation Pros","article_published_time":"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a"},"headline":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change","datePublished":"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805"},"wordCount":1632,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif","articleSection":["Planet"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805","url":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805","name":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change - Commercial Relocation Pros","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif","datePublished":"2026-06-23T19:21:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ea7614237ed75e47588c5b2dde10717b.avif","width":1200,"height":625},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=805#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"America Isn\u2019t Sweating Climate Change"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/","name":"Commercial Relocation Pros","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com"],"url":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}