A new Pew Research Center survey, entitled “Americans’ Shifting Views on Energy Issues,” should worry anyone who cares about climate policy. Americans still say, on balance, that the United States should prioritize renewable energy over fossil fuels. But that majority has fallen dramatically, from 79% in 2020 to 57% this year. Among Republicans, the shift is even more striking — in 2020, a majority said the country should prioritize renewables. Now, 71% say the country should prioritize fossil fuels. The trend is not subtle. Something has changed.
At first glance, this looks like a straightforward story of partisan polarization. Republicans moved right, Democrats stayed where they were and the country has continued to split. But that explanation misses a deeper shift.
What Americans think about energy has not changed. What energy has come to symbolize has.
For much of the early 21st century, renewable energy was sold as not only a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, but more modern: a symbol of innovation, competence and belief in the future. That framing was powerful for a while. Over time, it began to shift. Clean energy stopped being presented primarily as a way to build a more capable society and started being presented as a moral sensibility. Once that happened, the politics were predetermined.
Pew’s findings point in exactly that direction. Americans still tend to view wind and solar positively on environmental grounds, but they are much more ambivalent about whether those sources are affordable and reliable. Republicans in particular are now far more likely to say that wind and solar are expensive and unreliable compared with other energy sources. That suggests they are responding not just to policy, but to a broader narrative: Fossil fuels are associated with affordability and grown-up realism, while renewables are associated with aspiration, mandates and a style of politics many voters consider intrusive, if not antithetical to their own beliefs.
This helps explain why so much climate messaging falls flat, even when the policy itself is sound. The problem is not that Americans do not care about the future. It is that too many climate advocates have spent more time trying to sound virtuous rather than showing people, in practical terms, how a climate policy based on renewables can create economic opportunity and lower costs, and how renewable energy can be incorporated into Americans’ daily lives in ways that are reliable, affordable and beneficial.
Most people do not experience energy as an ethical issue. It is about whether the lights stay on and whether the bill is affordable. They do not think about energy in terms of climate. It is a practical matter of daily life.
That, however, is precisely why supporters of decarbonization should not let the Pew study lead to pessimism. If we strip away the cultural performance around renewable energy advocacy, it presents a much stronger political case than climate warriors seem willing to make. The case is not that Americans should consume less, apologize more and learn to live with less power.
Any assessment of our society’s future undoubtedly requires that we will need enormous quantities of electricity for more homes, transportation, industry, massive data centers and whatever comes next. We will need to produce it cheaply, reliably and at scale. Public anxiety about energy demand is not abstract; in a separate Pew survey from March, Americans expressed broad concern about the effects of data centers on energy costs and the environment.
Dartmouth, in its own small way, has understood this. The College’s Climate Collaborative has been framed not primarily as an exercise in self-denial, but as institutional modernization: replacing aging systems, building geo-exchange infrastructure and trying to create an energy system that can endure. Dartmouth has said it plans to invest over $500 million in climate-related capital improvements, with the goal of cutting 60% of campus emissions by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
The right has understood something the left often resists admitting: People like power. We like what it provides: mobility, comfort, convenience and growth — and all without guilt. If Republicans are successfully persuading voters that fossil fuels represent realism while renewables represent fragility, then the problem is not just that the right is cynical. The problem is that progressives have allowed themselves to be caricatured, sometimes with their own help.
That is why this Pew survey matters. It is not just a snapshot of partisan disagreement; it is a warning that the current argument for decarbonization is not working. If advocates of clean energy want to rebrand and rebuild a bipartisan coalition, they need to stop talking like influencers and start talking like people who intend to run the country and the future. They need to make the case that renewables are not symbols of personal morality but tools of national capability and competence: cheaper over time, more resilient when paired with storage and transmission, less geopolitically vulnerable and better suited to a century that will demand far more electricity, not less.
Clean energy will not win because it is ethically superior. It will win if Americans believe it can keep the lights on.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
