The Current American Mindset on Global Warming
/A new Pew Research Center Poll reveals a steep decline among Americans who say there is solid evidence that global warming is a serious problem. 35% agree today that global warming is a serious problem, down from 44% in April 2008.
Equally concernful, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.
A general belief in global warming has lost credibility among America’s Independent voters, with 53% seeing solid evidence of gobal warming vs. 75% in April 2008. There is also steep erosion among liberal Republicans in believing that global warming exists.
Less than two months before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a bare majority of 56% of Americans think the US should join the international community in addressingt global climate change, while 32% say the US should set its own standards.
Bottom line, climate change has never been a serious public debate in the US, even with Al Gore’s agency on the topic. Pundits argue that environmental concerns cannot be subordinated to economic ones.
I will add another consideration, and that is confusion. Reflecting in my own choice of Internet categories and tags for A of C posts, I find overlapping writing around climate change, sustainability, conservation, agriculture, drought and more.
My own mind has become increasingly muddled on climate change, although I believe we must take action.
via CommonCurrent.comWhat Americans need, that perhaps Europeans and Chinese and other countries already have, is a simple, clear understanding of the key points around this issue.
Environmentalists should not allow the climate change debate to become another public health care fiasco, where death squads become the face of a topic and irrational hysteria reigns.
Americans are generally concerned already about government running one of the most independent countries on the planet. Our brains on ‘takeover topics’ are about full-up, and we have tremendous concern that our deficit far into the future, has become a roulette game with no middle-ground result.
If the deficit-building strategy is wrong, the consequences for the world are far worse on the short-term than global-warming is on the long-term. Americans are standing on quick-sand right now, but hopefully we will step up to the plate with a rational view of our role in global warming.
If Nancy Pelosi was vote counting on this topic, as she did public health care last evening, I’m not certain she would like her tally — although some moderate Republicans have come to the table on global warming, whereas none except Olympia Snowe will even utter the word public option in the health care debate.
Also, the business community has studied the topic and believes that we must take action. The future growth of multinationals is focused on emerging markets in other parts of the world.
Corporate interests are global, compared to the interests of Americans, which should also be global, but understandably are focused on their own lives and short-term needs. Anne
Read: Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming Pew Research Center
