Climate change divides Americans, but in an unlikely way: The more education that Democrats and Republicans have, the more their beliefs in climate change diverge.
About one in four Republicans with only a high school education said they worried about climate change a great deal. But among college-educated Republicans, that figure decreases,sharply, to 8 percent.
This relationship persists even when pollsters pose different kinds of questions about climate change – when Republicans are asked if they believe global warming “will never happen,” if they think it poses “a serious threat to way of life in your lifetime” or if it is caused by “natural changes in the environment.”This may seem counterintuitive, because better-educated Republicans are more likely to be aware of the scientific consensus that human activity is contributing to climate change. But in the realm of public opinion, climate change isn’t really a scientific issue. It’s a political one.
