Thanks for this article with it's great graphics...a reason I subscribe to the NYT!

Trump & the GOP aren't the problem when it comes to enacting climate change legislation. American voters don't want to pay more for energy. Every poll backs this up. The Republican party is simply reflecting the desires of their voters. The point of cap & trade was always to increase the price of 85 percent of the energy we use in America. That is the goal. For it to “work,” cap and trade needs to increase the price of oil, coal, and natural gas to force consumers to use more expensive forms of energy. President Obama’s former OMB director, Peter Orszag, told Congress that “price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's really a killer in an economic downturn where citizens & business fear higher costs, even slightly higher costs, & may see no concrete benefits. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. We're trying simultaneously to reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. Mind you this started when Obama was President. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels? Are we willing to vote against our own self interests & approve higher taxes on fossil fuels? Can we muster the restraint needed to leave assets worth trillions in the ground? Absolutely not. It's never going to happen.

As much as I support the national and international efforts to combat climate change during the Obama Administration, I believe that change is actually coming from cities, businesses and consumers first, then states and regions and finally, maybe, the Federal government. Affordable electric cars are on the horizon, wind and solar power and battery storage is exploding, especially in states like Kansas, and businesses are constantly seeking ways to cut energy costs, while enhancing their image with customers and investors. I expect the reverse to occur with disaster relief. After hurricane costs in the last two years have exceeded all of those from our national history, the willingness to continue supporting rebuilding is disaster areas is going to wane at the Federal level, if only because of budget limitations and frankly, Federal bureaucracy and mismanagement. The states will make better decisions about rebuilding when its their own money. This should be a sobering consideration for the states along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, but it does not appear to have sunk in yet.

The first thing to understand before offering solutions (that is the easy part) is to understand the root cause why conservatives deny AGW in the first place. It is totally irrational, but there isn't much you can do about it and it has absolutely nothing to do with science. It is evolution. They were born with more fear in their DNA than anyone else on the political spectrum. We all have some and it is on a continuum, the more you have, the further right you go until healthy fear begins to resemble symptoms of paranoia. The most common symptom? The sense that everyone is out to get you. And government is clearly out to get conservatives in their minds. Can you recall a problem where they offered a governmental solution to anything? Even if government is the only solution, they would not offer one, because they unconsciously prioritize their inner fears over the well-being of the people, country and yes, the planet. There, now you know why they deny AGW, they associate it with government out to get them. It is unconscious, automatic "thinking" which means they are predisposed to think this way and are probably not even aware of it. Since you can't change the way a person was born, solutions to AGW must consider this basic fact of evolution.

Americans aren't politically divided over climate change, politicians are. Specifically, politicians are divided into those (R) who are owned by the fossil fuel industry, and those (D) who are not.

So now all that the USA voters need to do is VOTE for people who agree with their attitude to solving climate change. Well, isn't that simple?

Global warming is the biggest challenge facing humankind in the 21st century. We desperately need a carbon fee and either a dividend or some offset to taxes. Some of a carbon fee could be used for rebates for solar and wind and for electric cars. Also we must do more on insulating buildings and energy efficiency. Other respondents are correct that there must be more attention paid to the harms of meat-eating, and the political left needs to reconsider its opposition to nuclear electricity in light of the climate crisis we now all face.

Once again, no mention of a leading cause of climate change, according to the United Nations: animal agriculture! Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouses gases than ALL transportation combined. Read Livestock's Long Shadow by the UN. Why this blackout on this particular piece of the puzzle? It's because we live in a carnist society, a term coined by Harvard trained social psychologist Dr Melanie Joy. We think meat and dairy consumption is a given... just the way it is. The truth is: it is totally unnecessary for health or survival for humans to eat animals or their byproducts. Animal agriculture is leading to massive habitat destruction to grow crops to feed the 60-70 billion farm animals we kill every year to eat, which leads to wildlife extinction. Because animals eat so much more than they produce as meat or dairy, it's leading to human world hunger. Wake up! This is the solution. You cannot call yourself an environmentalist or a humanitarian if you eat animals!

Four of the five have strong public support and are not part of the majorities platform. What doe s that tell you? they are out of touch, and not doing these things hurts us

“Maybe you support renewable energy because it’s cheaper, because it’s cleaner, or because it’s better for human health,” he said. “Maybe you support it because it lessens our dependence on fossil fuels and aids our push for energy independence.” Then you’d be wrong: Renewable energy is not cheaper or cleaner - because natural gas (methane) is necessary to fill in for the times renewable energy isn’t available - an average of 75% of every day - the combination of the two is 29% more expensive than carbon-free nuclear energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and almost as expensive as burning natural gas alone. http://thorium-now.org/images/uneconomical.jpg Renewable energy does not lessen dependence on fossil fuels - solar and wind are entirely dependent on “natural gas”, the marketing term for fossil-fuel methane, to fill in and smooth irregularities in generation which would cause reliability problems on the grid. Renewable energy does indeed aid our push for energy independence, at the cost of climate - because America has more access to fracked natural gas from domestic sources, we’ve been able to reduce reliance on expensive, imported sources. Both are equally to blame for steadily increasing global carbon emissions, and the threat of climate change.

The funny (as in strange) thing about Americans is that when asked questions about issues they tend to support many things that would indicate they lean Left to Center-Left. The same people, questioned with hot button words and brands applied answer more Center-Right to Right. This is what well over 50 years of Republican messaging and a complicit media has done for us. The media for years portrayed Paul Ryan as a serious deficit hawk when in fact his numbers never have added up and take a look at the debt bomb coming from the GOP/Trump Tax Scam. Democrats suck and branding and messaging compared to Republicans which is also funny, since most of the media savvy people are supposedly are liberals.

And, again, not a single mention of population growth. With the world soon to reach 8 billion, and expected to hurtle on to 9 billion and then 10 billion and then 11 billion before maybe, maybe, leveling off. Or even the turbo-charged population growth to North America the last 20 to 30 years. A supply-side focus will result in nearly every open space in America being covered with solar panels; endless mountain-tops and ocean sides covered with wind towers. And the environmental community ignores the impacts on habitat; ecosystem destruction; dynamiting of mountain-tops for concrete pads for wind towers; filling in of streams and headwaters for access roads and placement of solar panels in seasonal wetlands; the loss of agricultural soils; the mining for the battery storage systems; the 6th great extinction, etc. Elimination of natural resource protection zoning and support for land use planning to provide total exemptions and fast tracked status for renewables (as has happened repeatedly under the once pro-environment Democrats in Vermont). Nope, don't worry about population growth, global warming is the only thing that matters. . .

Whom will the states compel to take & PAY FOR costly, unreliable renewable energy?

I think a more informative data should include both sides (support vs against) on each topic.

None of these questions require sacrifices. We're far beyond the point where we can stop catastrophic change without that--from eating much less meat, stopping all leisure travel by car or plane until we have electric vehicles, paying to strengthen your house against fire and flood, or moving away from the coast/rivers/Western forests. It's interesting, in an abstract way, to see what people think, but does remind one of Titanic jokes.

The county by county data clearly illustrates the situation across the country. Thanks to the Times for this. There are some "overlays" that would be even more illuminating... how many people even know the magnitude of their carbon footprint and how many have reduced it in the last year???? The dominant electrical energy of origin, i.e., coal, nat/gas, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind or other by county??? Climatic conditions by county such as droughts, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and avg temperature rise...???? Then, of course, dominant political party affiliations!

Even if you believe that changes in the climate are a natural thing, human do have an impact, even if it is only speeding up a natural change. If we can do ANYTHING to to slow the process down we should.

Apropos mja’s comment that people who are ok with drilling live nowhere near where it’s being done, there is generally a NIMBY response in people’s willingness to do their part to counteract climate change. Otherwise, why do far more people drive cars than take public transportation, ride a bicycle or walk? Why do far more people fly than take the train? Why do far more people discard their waste into landfills or the environment than recycle or compost? There are countless more such examples that can be explained away by everything from ignorance to laziness, but the root of the problem is a kind of environmental-responsibility-for-thee-but-not-for-me selfishness combined with long-term myopia that prioritizes the present over and above future generations that we only ostensibly care about.

Americans are not “politically divided on climate change”; rather, a great many of them are scientifically illiterate and willfully so. You should have the courage to say so instead of spinning this as a matter of opinion or honest debate.

There will always be disagreement between the willfully ignorant and intelligent people. Ignorance far outweighs intelligence. Ignorance is empowered by "conservatives".

I suspect most people who say they're OK will drilling don't live anywhere near where it's done.