With all the crazy weather the U.S. has experienced over the last couple of years, and especially the last couple of months, I figured most Americans had climbed aboard the climate change bandwagon.
But the Gallup polling organization finds that the number of Americans who feel global warming is a threat to their family – certainly a more dire phrase than asking if they believe in climate change – is down 10 percentage points. In 2007-08, 63 percent of poll respondents said they felt “very” or “somewhat” threatened by global warming. Gallup’s newest numbers show that figure has dropped to 53 percent.
With their extraordinary reach, the Gallup organization conducted surveys in 111 countries in 2010 and found that Americans and Europeans were feeling substantially less threatened by climate change than they did a few years ago, while more Latin Americans and sub-Saharan Africans see themselves at risk.
Other than the portion of the globe that Gallup labels “developed Asia,” where 74 percent fear global warming, those expressing the biggest concerns are our neighbors to the south, Latin America, with 73 percent saying that climate issues present a threat. Our Canadian neighbors rank third in the world with 71 percent stating their anxieties.
Within Latin America, countries that were hit particularly hard by floods, such as Ecuador and Venezuela, saw residents’ likelihood to view global warming as a threat surge in 2010.
According to Gallup, these are the implications of the poll numbers: “The feuding between rich and poor nations at climate talks in Bangkok in April demonstrates the obstacles that remain before the world can agree on a climate policy. Gallup’s data show that fewer Americans and Europeans, whose nations are central players in these talks, feel threatened by global warming today than they did in recent years. However, majorities in many of these (European) countries still see climate change as a serious threat, which means the issue remains personally important to them.”
