America’s Complacency About Climate Change

[Mass]

Americans care less about climate change than Palestinians and Iraqis, not to speak of any countries with an economy similar to ours.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/americas-complacency-about-climate-change.php

Ezra Klein and Jesse Zwick at The Vine both discuss this University of Maryland survey which asks people to rate climate change as a priority from one (low) to ten (high) and then reports an average:



It’s perhaps not so surprising that Palestinians and Iraqis feel they have bigger fish to fry, but even they care more about the issue than Americans do. Conventional wisdom is that people don’t like the idea of economic sacrifice for environmental gain, especially during a recession, but China and India and Chile and Poland and Germany are all populated by people too. My guess would be that the difference is the presence of a large, well-financed, and influential denialist elite. But to test that you’d have to try to look at other countries with substantial denialist elites; I think the Czech Republic and Australia fit the bill but neither made the survey.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Do any other countries have the well-funded corporate misinformation campaign we have here?

:shrug:

[defendandprotect]

2. Poster above is correct .. . America heavily propagandized by Exxon-Mobil. .. still--!!!

What you have are highly underinformed Americans on this issue --

Even up to 5 years ago, very few understood the real threats to us --

And, let's face it, they also quite neatly managed to co-opt, distort, destroy --

and bury -- Earth Day! Ever hear of it lately?

So, all of the issues of the filth of our air, water, oceans, rivers are buried with it.

Sad -- but corporate/elites are suicidal and they're taking us all with them!

Meanwhile, of course, the paranoid elites -- PNAC, etal - combined with MIC want to control

the world and see violence as the way to do it. Heaven only knows what new weapons they've

come across and I wouldn't ignore growing ability to "control" weather as a weapon!

[Uncle Joe]

3. I imagine the passengers in First Class on the Titanic felt less concern for it's sinking

than those in Second and Third Class.

First dibs on the life boats and less likely to be locked in their cabins.

Thanks for the thread, Mass.