Americans overwhelmingly believe that global warming is happening, but few think that the changes will harm them personally. In a recent article supported by insightful maps, The New York Times relays the results from the Yale Climate Opinion Maps in the U.S. for 2016.
The NYT highlights the problem of risk perception:
Global warming is precisely the kind of threat humans are awful at dealing with: a problem with enormous consequences over the long term, but little that is sharply visible on a personal level in the short term. Humans are hard-wired for quick fight-or-flight reactions in the face of an imminent threat, but not highly motivated to act against slow-moving and somewhat abstract problems, even if the challenges that they pose are ultimately dire.