Climate change: Most people in the advanced world believe the US is doing a bad job, according to Pew survey

Respondents expressed serious doubts that international climate efforts would effectively address the magnitude of the climate crisis: 52% of respondents did not have confidence because the multilateral response would be successful, while 46% were optimistic that nations they could respond cooperatively.

But the survey also suggested a growing awareness of the impacts of climate change, with 72% of respondents worried that the climate crisis would personally harm them at some point in their lives. In addition, 80% said they were willing to make personal sacrifices or change their behavior to deal with the crisis.

Jacob Poushter, Pew’s associate director of research and one of the report’s authors, said that while climate concerns had grown since the center’s last survey in 2015, it was still a polarizing issue in some parts of the advanced world.

“We have a trend, where there are a lot more people who are very concerned about the personal harms of climate change since 2015,” Poushter told CNN. “This is especially true in Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Korea.”

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“But there are large ideological fractions in many of these questions,” he added. “There is more polarization on this issue in the United States and, to some extent, in Australia, than many of the other countries we have surveyed.”

Part of the U.S. survey was conducted in February, while respondents from the other 16 sites participated between mid-March and near the end of May 2021. Surveys were also conducted in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

This was before extreme summer weather events affected much of the northern hemisphere due to heat waves, forest fires, hurricanes and floods. Although many respondents live in parts of the world where these events are becoming more common.

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Regarding the personal impact of the climate crisis, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Korea showed the largest increases in the number of respondents who said they were “very concerned” about the crisis, compared to the 2015 surveys.

South Koreans were more generally concerned about looking at respondents who were “a little” or “very” worried (88%), followed by Greece (87%), Spain (81%), Italy (80%) , France (77%) and Germany (75%).

In Sweden, only 44% said they were “a little” or “very worried,” followed by the Netherlands (59%), the United States (60%) and Australia (64%).

In the United States, public opinions about the climate crisis did not change significantly compared to the 2015 survey.

In contrast, Japan was the only place that recorded a significant drop, 8 percentage points less, in the number of respondents “very concerned” about climate change. The decline comes as the country recorded its first season of cherry blossoms and faced deadly floods and heat waves in recent years, which scientists say are due to warming temperatures.

Old versus young; women vs. men

According to the survey, young adults were more concerned than their older counterparts about how warming temperatures would affect them personally. Sweden, home of prominent youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, came out with the widest generational gap, with 65% of young people aged 18 to 29 at least “a little worried” about the climate crisis affecting them, 40 percentage points more than adults 65 years or older.

The United States, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Australia also saw a substantial age gap in public view of the rapidly warming planet. But those over 65 in Greece and South Korea were more concerned than the younger age group.

“It’s not new to us that younger people around the world are more concerned about climate change,” Poushter said.

“It’s the same when we asked the question of whether global climate change is a threat, so it’s really a coherent link we had.”

Women were also more concerned about the personal impacts of climate change than men on the audiences surveyed. In Germany, for example, 82% of women compared to 69% of men expressed concern.

Public opinions on climate change also fell across the political spectrum. Those on the left were more inclined to take personal measures to mitigate the crisis. The results are particularly true in the United States, where 94% of people who identify with the left are more likely to alter the way they live and work to save the planet.

Eri Yamasumi, a specialist in climate strategies and policies for the United Nations Development Program, said the results of the survey match those of a similar but larger survey in which he worked with Oxford University, published earlier this year.

“The Pew survey reaffirms the fact that people see a great personal threat due to climate change, not only in small developing island states, less developed countries and fragile contexts, but also in many places in North America. , Europe and Asia-Pacific, “Yamasumi, who did not participate in the Pew report, told CNN.

“Addressing the climate crisis requires major changes and it is important to understand how the public sees these changes,” he added.

Individual action vs. collective

The report also revealed mixed views on how to have a greater collective response to the crisis. Climate researchers have said that no individual action can address the magnitude of the problem, instead governments should commit to comprehensive and bold policies that hold industries accountable for their role in perpetuating the crisis.

Many respondents criticized how the United States, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, has been managing the climate crisis.

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An average of 33% of respondents in the survey said the United States was doing a “somewhat good” job, while only 3% said it was doing a “very good” job. Among American respondents, there is a little more confidence, with 39% of respondents saying the country is doing a “slightly good” job and 8% saying it was “very good” .

As in the US, China also received a critical number of polls, with 78% saying it was doing a “very bad” job facing global climate change. More than a month after the survey, deadly floods due to heavy rainfall killed hundreds of people in China’s Henan province.

“Less confident that the international community can cope with climate change, especially when it comes to views on the United States and China,” Poushter told CNN.

“There is a lot of doubt that these two countries, which are the two largest broadcasters in the world, are doing a good job of addressing the issue.”

Unlike the United States and China, which are the two largest economies and emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, the European Union and the United Nations in general have received more positive views on their action on climate.

The results come as tensions between the United States and China increase before COP26, when world leaders come together to face a warming world and make strict commitments to achieve zero carbon emissions. On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the two countries to avoid any problems that would hamper international climate talks.

And since polls came before many disasters caused by climate change this summer, Poushter said public opinion may have changed even more in time since the poll. He also noted that the Covid-19 pandemic had limited the scope of the survey.

“Unfortunately, this is only among a kind of advanced economy where we know the telephone survey works because of the pandemic,” Poushter said.

“In a typical year, we would go to the rest of the countries and have a broader view of how climate change and other issues affect people in the world’s most developed and emerging economies.”

As people around the world are exposed to the consequences of climate change, experts say public awareness of the impacts is needed. The report on the state of science of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the planet is warming faster than scientists had previously thought.

Deep and sustained emissions cuts are needed during this decade to give the Earth the ability to contain an average increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, to prevent a worsening of the impacts of climate change. and pass critical thresholds for many ecosystems.

“People see the climate crisis in their own gardens,” Yamasumi said. “Public awareness of the crisis is critical, both for education and to encourage all countries to take the bold steps needed to keep people and the planet safe for future generations.”

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