Houston residents are worried about climate change
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A majority of Houstonians are worried about climate change amid the city's vulnerability to natural disasters and intensifying heat.
The big picture: Climate anxiety is concentrated in many large U.S. metros and some coastal regions.
- About 63.3% of U.S. adults overall are "somewhat" or "very" worried about global warming as of 2024, per Yale Program on Climate Change Communication estimates based on survey data.
Zoom in: Harris County residents are slightly more concerned about climate change than the national average, with 64.5% of Houstonians saying they are "somewhat" or "very" worried.
- Fort Bend County is slightly more worried than the national average, while Waller, Austin, Liberty, and Chambers county residents are less worried than the national average.
- More than 70% of adults in Austin's Travis County and San Antonio's Bexar County said they were worried.
Context: Green in the map above represents counties with a larger share of adults worried about global warming than the national average.
- Purple represents counties with fewer adults with climate anxiety.
Zoom out: Some of the counties with especially high shares of adults worried about global warming — like Queens, New York (79.8%) — are coastal areas vulnerable to climate-driven threats like flooding.
- They also tend to be relatively populous, with 4 of the 10 most worried counties having at least 1 million residents.
- The findings are based on statistical modeling using data from nationally representative Ipsos surveys.