Reality Check | ecoWURD | radio

Joel Burcat, environmental litigation lawyer and author joined ecoWURD on Reality Check with Charles Ellison to discuss the level of national inaction on emergencies such as the climate crisis and where we go from here on that issue and others.

“Part of the problem is that we had a president the past several years who spent quite a bit of time claiming that the climate crisis is a hoax and many people went with that,” said Burcat. “Those views don’t go away too quickly. Fact of the matter is that many places believe the climate crisis doesn’t exist. If you listen to talk show hosts on conservative radio, for example, to them it’s a hoax. It’s a very difficult situation: a mix of people who don’t believe it and a Congress completely divided over it.”

According to recent polling from Morning Consult, just half of voters view “climate change” as a “critical threat.”

“Voters were more likely to view other potential threats as critical than they were climate change, such as cyberattacks on the United States (69 percent), domestic terrorism (65 percent), the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran (55 percent and 54 percent, respectively) and white supremacist groups (51 percent),” according to the survey.