MAINE PUBLIC • November 4, 2022
National polls suggest more than half of Americans think their family and community will be harmed by human-caused global warming. Even more think the federal government is not doing enough to fight climate change. That’s not the story in rural Washington County. There’s skepticism about climate change even though the region’s natural resource-based economy is inextricably linked to a rapidly warming sea. Dr. Tora Johnson, a social scientist and geographer at UMaine at Machias, works on climate change and has surveyed municipal officials about their climate change beliefs. She found that only about a third of people understood the reality of climate change and accepted it.