Young people are expected to bear the most severe consequences of climate change and play a central role in climate activism. Yet political science has paid limited theoretical attention to age as a variable of interest in climate change opinion. This paper revisits the role of age in shaping climate attitudes and shows that it is a stronger and more consistent predictor than the existing literature suggests.

Using historical time-series data from the General Social Survey (1973–2024), cross-sections from the Climate Change in the American Mind survey (2008–2024), and panel data from the ANES (1992–1996 and 2016–2024), we find that climate concern declines as individuals age, independent of cohort and period effects. Age remains predictive even after accounting for partisanship and ideology, and is more strongly associated with climate change attitudes than with other polarized political issues. These descriptive patterns are consistent with a rational discounting framework, the “shadow of the future”, in which the future costs of climate change become less salient as individuals age.