“Americans and Chinese, whose economies are responsible for the greatest annual CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, are among the least concerned”, the Pew Research Center’s poll said on Thursday.
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“It’s a very good step but it is not enough”, UN Climate Change Secretariat Christiana Figures said during a presentation of the report in Bonn.
Climate change is often discussed in terms of predictions about what may happen in the next 100 years or more as average global temperatures rise.
The poll also measures the “degree to which people fear climate change” and how it will affect them personally, which varies widely across the globe.
“But such broad, general support masks significant partisan differences”, said Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Attitudes.
Opponents of action on climate change like to claim that the United States acting alone will accomplish nothing, and that countries such as China and India will get a free ride while Americans suffer. Ministers would discuss how to share action to tackle climate change beyond 2020 between developed and developing nations, the level of ambition in the deal, actions before 2020, and finance for developing nations, he said.
“As the Paris conference approaches, majorities in 39 nations (Pakistan is the outlier) say they support their country limiting its emissions as part of a climate accord”, it added.
All countries agree that greenhouse-gas emissions which drive warming must be curbed. The new survey, conducted in person and by telephone with 45,435 people from March through May, found that Latin American and African countries were most concerned about global warming.
No one thinks the fight against climate change will be cheap.
Developing countries insist rich ones should lead the way in slashing emissions because historically they have emitted more pollution.
She stressed that the ones who have contributed the least to global warming were the ones who will suffer the most from its harmful effects.
“The goal of this resolution would not be to oppose the president’s plans on the merits”, Lee continued, “but simply to make explicit that which has been implicit in every other previous climate-change negotiation”. But the fact that this vast undercount went on so long only points to a much larger problem with the entire climate change agenda. Even in the US, a country known for its technological innovations, 66% believe people will need to significantly alter their lifestyles.
But in order to not pierce through the 2°C ceiling, total emissions in 2030 should not exceed 42 billion tonnes, according to the UN’s climate science panel.
The United Nations recently analyzed the plans filed by about 150 countries and said that while it would slow climate change this century, it warned more is necessary to limit rising global temperatures to two degrees Celsius.
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Its findings are in broad agreement with other studies on attitudes toward climate change.
