Climate change concern up

– The proportion of Americans “alarmed” by climate change has doubled in five years, the pollsters behind a nationwide survey revealed on Tuesday.

Twenty-nine percent of respondents to the poll conducted last December by Yale and George Mason universities were in the alarmed category – an all-time high and twice the percentage in 2013.

“It’s an incredibly important shift in the political climate of climate change,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication.

More than 1 100 adults across the US were asked about their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours toward climate change. The answers were then used to classify respondents into six groups, from dismissive, or least worried about climate

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change, to alarmed, for those most worried. Those dismissive of climate change represented 9% of respondents, a drop of five points compared to 2013.

The findings come amid a growing polarisation of the political debate over the issue of global warming in the US.

The decision by US President Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris climate deal has fired up his base, while opponents have championed a “Green New Deal” that seeks to virtually eliminate US greenhouse gas emissions within a decade.

The 2015 Paris accord, agreed to by nearly 200 nations, seeks to wean the global economy off fossil fuels in the second half of this century, limiting the rise in average temperatures to “well below” 2oC above pre-industrial times. – Reuters