The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

The world was offered starkly conflicting views of the future this week as an American president in full climate-change denial shared the spotlight in Davos, Switzerland, with a 17-year-old Swedish girl who is the Earth's most prominent environmental activist.

Donald Trump's vision was of a planet happily awash in newly tapped fossil fuels, consuming its way to economic bliss as America leads the way. He warned the World Economic Forum audience to "reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse."

Greta Thunberg said it was long past time for world powers to drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet. "Our house is still on fire," she told business and government leaders. "Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. ... Act as if you loved your children above all else."

'Earth is facing a climate emergency'

Trump offered the usual falsehoods: America's air and water are the cleanest in the world. Wrong and wrong (he is, in fact, stripping out regulations that would safeguard both).

Thunberg echoed the findings by thousands of climate scientists: "clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency."

OTHER VIEWS:Greta Thunberg’s words don't have the same import as those spoken by President Trump

The encouraging news is that American voters, who will decide the U.S. direction on climate change, are quickly tilting toward the teenager with science on her side. Survey results by Yale and George Mason universities conducted in November show:

►More than 6 out of 10 registered voters said they'd support a president who declares global warming a national emergency, a result up 17 percentage points since April.

►45% of voters said a candidate's position on global warming will be very important in deciding their 2020 vote. This includes 72% of Democrats, up 8 points since April, and 41% of independents, up 7 points.

Global warming on voters' minds

►When voters were asked to name the single most important political issue, global warming was ranked No. 5.

►Nearly 7 in 10 voters favor a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies where the revenue would be used to reduce other taxes, such as on income.

The rapidly shifting views on climate change are likely the result of several factors, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who cooperated on the survey.

In addition to a dire series of scientific reports illustrating how the world isn't moving fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there have been frightening numbers of catastrophic floods, fires and storms in the past year. Such destruction is exactly what climate change was expected to produce. The nation is also in the midst of a presidential election campaign, and nearly all the Democratic candidates are talking up plans to address global warming, acting in response to what they believe voters want to hear one the issue. All of this heightens awareness, Leiserowitz says.

That's good. Because the kind of profligate fossil fuel extraction and consumption that Trump heralded at Davos would be a disaster for the world. Last year was the second hottest 12 months on record. The 2010s were the hottest decade. The atmosphere contains more heat-trapping carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels, than the world has seen in 3 million years. Disastrous brush fires in heat- and drought-stricken Australia have now consumed an area the size of Virginia.

Worse is in store if America's leaders don't embrace a future of clean and renewable energy and commit to drastically reducing carbon emissions — and promote the same around the world.

If Trump isn't listening, American voters certainly are. They can make all the difference come November.

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