SF has the highest climate anxiety among U.S. counties
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San Francisco leads the country in worrying about climate change, with 82.3% of adults expressing concerns over global warming.
State of play: Climate anxiety is more likely to be concentrated in big U.S. metros and some coastal communities, per Yale Program on Climate Change Communication estimates based on survey data.
- The findings, based on statistical modeling using data from nationally representative Ipsos surveys, paint a stark picture of how attitudes toward climate change vary nationwide.
Zoom in: Many of the California counties with some of the highest nationwide shares of worried adults are in areas vulnerable to climate-driven threats like flooding or wildfire risk.
- In San Francisco, 66% of adults say they've personally experienced the effects of global warming.
- The policy they support most is generating renewable energy on public land in the U.S.
The big picture: About 63.3% of U.S. adults overall are "somewhat" or "very" worried about global warming as of 2024, the report shows.
- While the map above may look like a sea of purple, "it's crucial to remind people that the vast majority of the population exists in some of these green places," says Jennifer Marlon, executive director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions and senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment.
Reality check: Individual attitudes about climate change are not based entirely on local risk, with politics, education, and other factors playing big roles.