Climate Action: We Don’t Know How Strong We Already Are, And It’s Hurting Us
First Take: The Climate Movement — Stalled, Skewed, But Not Screwed
We Must Begin at the End
I’ve got a story to tell you in this post, and I’m going to tell you the end right now because there’s no time to lose.
The world is crying out for climate leadership, which only The Climate Movement can provide.
This is our kairos-climate-moment. Time for us to pull our destiny into the present and become what we’re meant to be. Time for you, for each of us, to meet the challenge on all of our Olympian Fields of Action. Time for regular folk like you and me to become heroes together. Nothing less than greatness is our calling.
In a Nutshell
So the synopsis of the story is this:
Stalled — Right now The Climate Movement is basically stalled with little to no forward momentum.
Skewed — Our perceptions are skewed, and not in a good way, limiting all we can be right now.
But Not Screwed — The answer lies within and among us. We control our destiny. Always have. Always will.
Getting Unskewed
That we are stalled is a fair assessment of where things stand. Why we are stalled is an important discussion I can only hint at in this post.
My focus here is on our skewed perceptions, because becoming aware of them can help get us out of the rut we are in. Time to get unskewed.
Polls from the US and around the world show we have a pessimistic perception problem. Concerning climate change, we chronically underestimate how many are concerned and how many support action. We don’t know how much support we already have.
This is clear from the latest poll results reported a few days ago from our friends at the Yale/GMU Climate Communications from a survey that was taken in Fall 2025. I want to lift up three findings.
59% say climate is “personally important to them” (see first graph, below). Even as this has slipped 5 points from Spring 2025, it is still a solid base of support for action. It isn’t yet at our goal of 80% for Climate Action Supporters, our Second Catalytic Source of Transformation. But it’s something to build on.
85% either underestimate (61%) or don’t know (24%) how worried the public is about climate change (see second graph, above). Why am I including the 24% who don’t know? Because for many their support for action is influenced by the perception and knowledge they have about others. They must know of the actual support of others to be unskewed and moved towards action.
Another key way to get unstalled and unskewed is to talk about our need for action with family and friends. Yet only 21% are doing so. We must boost this to 80% or more!
A different study of results in the US from 2021 found that:
80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37–43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true.
A worldwide poll from 2023 found the same problem of skewed perception:
69% said they were willing to do climate action, but respondents also thought only 43% of people were willing to take action;
this is a 26% gap between perception and reality, between a skewed perception of a false weak plurality of 43% versus a strong reality of 69% willing to act;
when pro-action types are informed that they are actually a part of a strong majority of nearly 70%, their willingness to do more increases by about 50%.
The bottom line: skewed pessimism dampens action and helps to keep us stalled.
The good news is that while we are stalled and skewed, we aren’t screwed, not by a long shot. We can change these false perceptions and ignorance with the actual reality, and boost support for action at the same time. As both history and social science show, the truth liberates action and will help set us free from the rut we are in.
A Wider Pessimism Is Preventing Us From Creating a Better World
Yet we must also recognize that climate pessimism is situated in a wider context. It’s not just on climate change that we have a perception problem. Data scientist extraordinaire Hannah Ritchie has pulled together findings from many studies showing that pessimism about the societies and countries we live in is widespread. For example, as you can see in the graph below, people from a wide range of countries are more pessimistic about their nation than their own families.
In other words, we’re fine, but the world ain’t.
False Perceptions Aren’t the Only Problem
Truth be told, however, it’s not just perceptions that are the problem. Israel-Gaza, Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine, the rise of authoritarianism and threats to democracy and the rule of law, increasing economic inequality — these combine with our false perceptions and have helped to temporarily stall out The Climate Movement.
Strength From Before
Even as we recognize the challenge, the findings summarized above show we have strength we didn’t know we had.
But we also have strength from those who have gone before us. We must remember that our story stretches back before our time.
As I have discussed before, people have been fighting against industrial pollution and for a clean environment since the 19th Century. Scientists have been sounding the alarm on climate change since the late 1950s and the US National Academy of Sciences issued reports in the 1970s upon which strong climate action could have been built.
A 1980 poll in the US showed we even had significant popular concern — 65% — even more than today, upon which to build support for action. But then Reagan came to power and the opposition began campaigns to sow doubt and lie about policy solutions and the poll numbers fell. Yet while the opposition has thrown everything at us and we have absorbed blow after blow, we’re still standing.
Finally, as a movement for social change we stand in a profound tradition of people rising up to create a better world, including the Civil Rights Movement in the US.
As we step forward we have this great cloud of witnesses from the past calling us into our future, calling us towards, in Lincoln‘s words, the better angels of our nature.
Time To Wake Up To Our Strength
We may be stalled and skewed, but we are not screwed.
Kairos-Climate-Time demands that we wake up to our strength! Climate Action Supporters are at or above our 80% goal or nearly so around the globe. The world is crying out for The Climate Movement to claim our destiny and become now what we will be: the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.
Empowered by our values, we will overcome the false pessimism within ourselves and our fellow citizens when we join together. We must let the truth set us free, a truth we must help each other see. Time to become heroes together.
Join us!
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Thanks for the comment! Yes, in many places around the world renewables are cheaper than fossils on price alone — not counting the so-called “negative externalities,” i.e., pollution that kills people and harms human health. These aren’t included in the economic exchange between buyer and seller. So renewables are not just better, they’re also cheaper.
Interesting. Another misperception that could potentially dampen enthusiasm for action is the lingering perception that green energy is more expensive than fossil energy, whereas they are actually now either comparable to each other or, in some instances, green is even cheaper.