The latest survey from the Pew Research Center came out last month, measuring the trust Americans have in science and scientists. This is a pretty large survey—about 9500 this year—and it’s been conducted for five years now (and different variations on these questions have been asked since the 1970s).
What stands out this year, again, is that Republicans are still far less likely to trust science than Democrats, and are less likely to think science should play a larger role in policymaking. This comes as no surprise to anyone, but the fact that this trust has barely rebounded from the hit it took during the pandemic demonstrates how ingrained mistrust has become, and is now more of a permanent fixture in the Republican mindset than a reaction to school closings and mask mandates.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that even though overall trust in institutions has been declining since the 1970s, science has held up pretty well. Overall, there’s still a strong sense among the American public writ large that science should be trusted. So as we venture down this road of trying to encourage the American public to embrace new and improved climate policy, public sentiment may be on our side.
How about globally? Well, apart from Northern and Western Europe and Central Asia, the challenge may be more uphill, at least in terms of confidence in science. Confidence in climate science and solutions like CDR is another matter—look for new data on these questions soon as surveys try to gauge these of attitudes more accurately.
