LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – In Part 1 of this editorial, we examined MLive’s recent climate coverage, questioned whether every weather event in Michigan should automatically be blamed on climate change, and revisited the rise of what critics call the modern climate industry built around carbon offsets, government subsidies and endless predictions of impending catastrophe.
In Part 2, we take a closer look at a different question: if climate change remains such an urgent crisis, why does it rank so low on the list of concerns for most Americans? While voters increasingly focus on inflation, immigration, crime and the economy, many of the same climate activists, politicians and organizations continue pushing the same warnings, policies and taxpayer-funded solutions that have dominated the conversation for decades.
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According to Gallup’s March 2026 “Most Important Problem” survey, climate change wasn’t even among the top issues Americans volunteered when asked to name the nation’s biggest problem. Government and politics led at 29%, followed by immigration (20%), the economy (11%) and inflation or higher prices (8%). Climate change was low enough that it did not appear among Gallup’s leading categories, suggesting it ranked well behind the issues Americans were most concerned about at the time of the survey in February. However, that doesn’t stop the media (and Democratic politicians) from continuing to push the issue.
Al Gore still a climate grifter.
And it doesn’t stop Al Gore either. He continues to run a global climate activism network. He remains chairman of the Climate Reality Project, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with climate-training events around the world aimed at recruiting and mobilizing new climate advocates. He continues giving speeches, promoting renewable-energy policies, and pushing climate initiatives such as Climate TRACE, a project that uses satellite and AI technology to track emissions. Earlier this month, Gore headlined a climate conference in Nashville where he delivered an updated version of his longtime climate presentation and warned that the climate crisis remains an urgent global threat.
More warnings of doom:
At Gore’s Nashville climate training event in May, he warned again of our impending doom and discussed how fossil fuels are “trapping as much extra heat every day as would be released by 750,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding on the Earth.” Clearly, Gore still believes there are minds to persuade, activists to mobilize, and a climate movement eager to keep funding the cause.
Michigan’s Governor Whitmer on board with climate change agenda.
Gore is hardly alone in carrying the climate-change banner. Many Democratic politicians have embraced the same sense of urgency, translating climate warnings into public policy and long-term government mandates. Among the most prominent is Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose administration has made climate policy a cornerstone of its economic and energy agenda.
Whitmer’s green-energy agenda is directly tied to the same climate-change framework promoted in the MLive article. Through her administration’s MI Healthy Climate Plan and legislation later approved by Michigan’s Democratic-controlled Legislature, Whitmer has committed the state to pursuing economy- wide carbon neutrality by 2050 while supporting a transition to 100% clean energy standards by 2040. Whitmer and her administration argue that climate change is affecting Michigan through increased flooding, heavier precipitation events, severe storms, warmer temperatures, changing winters, and other environmental impacts.
Whitmer’s plan includes expanding renewable energy, increasing electric vehicle adoption, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and transitioning away from fossil fuels. Critics argue the policies are based on climate predictions that remain debated and could impose significant costs on consumers (especially during a time when more energy is needed for AI data centers), while supporters view them as necessary to address long-term climate risks.
Following Gore’s script: Governor Whitmer sounds the climate alarm.
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Whitmer is every bit the climate alarmist as Gore. In her Executive Order in 2020, she said, “The science is clear, and message urgent: the earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, and human activities are largely responsible for this change. Climate change already degrades Michigan’s environment, hurts our economy, and threatens the health and well-being of our residents, with communities of color and low-income Michiganders suffering most. Inaction over the last half-century has already wrought devastating consequences for future generations, and absent immediate action, these harmful effects will only intensify. But we can avoid some of the worst harms by quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting nimbly to our changing environment.”
A short timeline for a long-term question.
One of the biggest problems with MLive’s story is the timeframe. The article repeatedly cites changes since 1970, a period of just 56 years in a state with weather records stretching back well over a century. Even NOAA notes that precipitation patterns often shift back and forth without a clear long-term pattern and can be influenced by multiple factors beyond temperature alone.
The MLive article also glosses over the fact that Michigan has always experienced dramatic weather swings. State climate records show temperatures have risen roughly 3 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century, not just since 1970, while warming has been concentrated primarily in winter and spring rather than evenly across all seasons. At the same time, Michigan agencies acknowledge that many factors affect weather-related damage, including aging infrastructure, development decisions, drainage systems, dams and population growth in vulnerable areas. A billion-dollar disaster today doesn’t necessarily mean the weather is unprecedented – it can also mean there are simply more roads, homes, businesses and infrastructure in harm’s way than there were decades ago.
Michigan’s weather has never been calm or predictable.
Michigan’s history doesn’t fit neatly into the climate-apocalypse narrative. The state hasn’t seen an F5 tornado since 1956, and Great Lakes water levels experienced dramatic swings over the past decade, rising from near-record lows around 2013 to record or near-record highs in 2019 and 2020 before moving back toward more typical levels. If climate trends are as simple as the headlines suggest, those wild reversals are difficult to explain. The reality is that Michigan has always experienced dramatic weather and water-level fluctuations, and some of the state’s worst natural disasters occurred generations before anyone was talking about carbon footprints or net-zero mandates.
The next time a storm rolls through Michigan, residents can probably expect two things: bad weather and another round of headlines insisting that every raindrop is proof of an impending climate apocalypse. But even one of the experts featured in MLive’s story acknowledges that weather damage isn’t solely about climate. Climate Central meteorologist Shel Winkley recently noted that “the infrastructure that we have in the United States wasn’t built for the extreme weather we’re experiencing today.”
When infrastructure fails, weather gets the blame.
In other words, when roads wash out, power lines fail, dams break or neighborhoods flood, the problem may involve more than rising temperatures. Aging infrastructure and population growth in vulnerable areas can all make weather events far more costly and disruptive than they would have been decades ago.
Whether Michigan’s changing weather is driven primarily by human activity, natural climate cycles, infrastructure challenges, or some combination of all three, one thing is certain: the debate is far from settled in the minds of many Americans. As politicians, activists, media outlets and advocacy groups continue sounding the alarm, voters appear increasingly focused on more immediate concerns affecting their daily lives. The climate conversation isn’t going away anytime soon, but neither are the questions about who benefits from the policies, predictions, and billions of dollars tied to it.
