The United States quietly hit a political tipping point some time in the 2010s, although few noticed at the time. That was the decade in which a majority of Americans polled said that climate change was really happening. Today, as many as 72 percent of Americans agree that climate change is real, according to the Yale Climate Opinion Map.
For decades, climate scientists have known this is the case: there is no comparable debate happening in their field over whether climate change is "real"; they have known it is real for a long time. For the rest of us, however, it seems that the confluence of bad natural disasters, extreme weather events, and droughts and floods have slowly changed our minds. Nowadays, it is normal for politicians on both sides of the aisle to speak of fighting climate change. In other words, it is a major (and normal) political issue to talk about.
