US poll says climate change not a priority
By Susan Wilson
It isn’t surprising that of the 18,578 people from 19 countries that were surveyed, United States citizens were among the least likely to want climate change legislation or regulation. Denial at its finest.
The Guardian reported on the new World Public Opinion poll. The participants were asked to answer three questions on a scale from zero “not a priority at all” and 10 “very high priority”. The questions were:
1) How high a priority does the government place on addressing climate change?
2) How high do you think the government should place on addressing climate change?
3) What is your guess on how high a priority the average person in country thinks the government should place on addressing climate change?
In answer to the first question, the United States with a score of 3.84 was only above Iraq with a score of 3.65 and the bottom country, Ukraine with a score of 2.18. The highest countries were surprisingly China with a score of 7.31, Germany with a score of 7.02, and the U.K. with a score of 5.92.
In answer to the second question, where do you think the priority should be, the U.S. was at the very bottom of the stack with a score of 4.71 with both the Palestinian Territories (4.91) and Iraq (5.14) scoring higher. Disgraceful considering that the only other countries at the bottom of the list both have ongoing wars within their borders.
The highest scoring countries were Mexico (9.09), China (8.86), and Turkey (8.34). India scored significantly higher than the US with a 7.52. How disappointing that one of the world’s most industrialized nations cares less about global warming than countries with minuscule resources in comparison.
In answer to the third and final question, what priority do your fellow citizens consider to be appropriate for your government, the US is again dead last with a score of 3.71. The only two countries close are Taiwan at 4.98 and Iraq with 5.05. The countries with the highest scores are Mexico (7.98), Ukraine (7.76) and Nigeria (7.49).
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Stumble It!
August 1st, 2009
Since China and India have refused to take any action equal to what the US is being asked to do, it’s all fine and dandy to say what ever they want.
Denial is acting like legislation that is going to be very disruptive and harmful to the US economically while the two fastest expanding economies will continue to dump emissions exponentially and unchecked is an unreasonable position.
Climate Change science is still in it’s infancy. The causes and our ability to change it isn’t the dead solid certainty many of the more militant folks say it is.
August 1st, 2009
8 yrs of using the highest political offices in the USA is responsible for this.
We know (cos it has since been admitted) that people like Philip Cooney changed, edited and reworded litterally hundreds of official documents to down-play and strick out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming on behalf of the Bush big oil cabal.
We also now know that Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Fish and Wildlife Service were forbidden to speak to the media; James Hansen at Nasa was told by public relations officials that there would be “dire consequences” if he continued to call for big cuts in greenhouse gases.
No wonder people in the USA have yet to wake up to what is going on.