No one cares about global warming now

The United States government is expected to approve a massive US$1.3-trillion omnibus spending bill Friday, a sweeping victory for Democrats who fought for — and won — funding for virtually all of the left’s priorities, everything from Planned Parenthood to gun control to child care to public transportation. The Democrats even won funding, and plaudits, for infrastructure and domestic programs they couldn’t secure under the Obama administration.

But no one is remarking on the Democratic cause that was thrown off the omnibus — climate change — because no one still considers it a Democratic priority. Nowhere in the bill’s 2,232 pages of spending goodies do the words “climate change” or “global warming” even appear.

Global warming is so yesterday. The diehards aside, does any American still care? Not according to polling, which consistently shows the public is unwilling to support climate change policies if there’s a cost attached. There’s pretty much nothing the public cares less about than climate change.

When pollsters ask the American public to rate the importance of climate change versus other public-policy issues such as health, education, crime and homelessness, climate change comes last or next to last. When it asks the public to compare its concern over climate change with concern over other environmental issues, such as air and water quality or the state of forests, global warming again comes last.

Europeans also aren’t fussed much by global warming. A study of 35,000 participants in 18 European countries by NatCen, Britain’s largest independent social research agency, found that in most countries fewer than one quarter were either “extremely worried” or “very worried” at the prospect. The blasé three-quarters-plus cut across most demographics: educated and uneducated, young and old. A 25- or 35-year-old “Currently we are a long way short of this.”

Politicians may claim to be concerned — no doubt some personally are — but their commitment to the cause can be seen in their actions, not their words. Throughout most of the Western world, governments are slashing subsidies to renewables. The U.S. under Trump — who was elected on a promise to scuttle climate policies — has done so dramatically and decisively, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, cutting funding for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and pretty