Global Majority Wants Action on Climate Change
LONDON - Almost two-thirds of the world’s people say there must be urgent action to tackle global warming, a poll for the BBC World Service showed on Tuesday.
Overall, 65 percent of the 22,000 people polled in 21 countries said there was a need “to take major steps very soon” ranging from 91 percent in Spain to 37 percent in India.
In the United States, the world’s biggest emitter of climate changing carbon gases, 59 percent called for urgent action and in China, which builds a coal-fired power station every five days to feed its booming economy, it was 70 percent.
The poll showed nine out of 10 people want some action on climate change, and 79 percent said human activity was contributing significantly to the problem that scientists say will cause major hardship worldwide.
The poll surveyed people in 14 of the 16 nations invited to a meeting of major world carbon emitters in Washington this week by George W. Bush, who has rejected calls for the United States to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions.
Washington is still opposed to timetables or targets and argues technology holds the answers.
The poll showed 73 percent of people on average agreed developing states should limit their emissions in return for financial aid and technological transfer from developed nations.
Support for this ranged from 90 percent in China to 47 percent in India. It was 70 percent in the United States, 81 percent in Britain and 78 percent in France.
Knowledge of climate change varied widely across the world, with 62 percent in France but just 5 percent in Russia saying they had heard or read a great deal about it, while in Indonesia 47 percent said they knew little about it.
The poll was conducted for the BBC by PIPA, the Programme on International Policy Attitudes, at the University of Maryland, using a combination of face-to-face and telephone interviews.
© 2007 Reuters
I wonder how many of those subjects have stopped using their cars, started growing their own food, stopped buying poorly made goods transported accross the world (and then subsequently discarded them)…?
If the governments are building coal powered stations, blocking Kyoto, doing absolutely nothing to promote ‘green’ products, then it is those subjects who will be the ones to take the major steps on their own. Hope they hurry up!
We know the governments administrations all over the world just want to skim the top for themselves in all cases. Change isn’t easy for them if they are rich and in power. Its obviously time for us as a species to make a change.
So, drop a driving day dudes! Pick one and don’t drive!
Remember “they” is YOU!
Make a change!
Why don’t our leaders pick up on this? They are either very ignorant or very corrupt, either is grounds for dismissal.
Gore/RFK Jr. Independent or Green in 2008!
The will of the people has been irrelevant in the USA for years and the good of the people for longer.
Disaster or political reform or Disaster then political reform?
This is SO beautiful.
We can see now why the oiligarchy has needed to own the media, control the flow of information and tap everything tapable… they have had to be constantly convincing us that THEY are what’s going on. They have had to keep efforting to narrow our range of perceived choices to the small number that have kept them in control of the game.
Well, I see form this article that the people of the world aren’t buying it—-people are rising to the defense of diversity and the planet and peace!
Truly Amazing! This article is as important as the temperature/CO2 chart in Gore’s book (ice core data)…
COPY IT AND POLLINATE IT TO EVERY PERSON, MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER (if they’ll print it) YOU CAN.
THIS IS THE END OF ALIENATION. THE END OF DIVIDE AND CONQUER. THIS IS THE END OF THE RICH TRICKING THE POOR TO FIGHT EACH OTHER.
Thanks to heroes like Al Gore, Hansen, Hartmann and so many more, there is no further need to bust a nut trying to turn the heads of the “powers-that-be” in the right direction. Now is the time to keep informing the people of the planet by word of mouth and the internet. The corporate boards and politicians will be running to catch up. Note the climate conferences and even w’s grudging comments this week. The powers may try to co-opt this out of habit, but will just be rolled into the dough.
Yet, respect them and, if they get it, bring them into the mix (they have great organizational skills…and $). Hell, some may even try to take credit for it, but so what. LOL
THIS, DEAR FRIENDS, IS THE DAWNING of the AGE of AQUARIUS!
VIVA! VIVA! VIVA LA EVOLUTION!
And spread the word!
Bravo!pizzadorf and jungleboy.
You both see that all problems start with us.
Now if we can wake up a few million more people.We just might be able to make a fight of all those environmental problems.
We must realize that we are the problem as well as the solution. Ah! just as all these new power thirsty huge tv sets are coming online yet. Do you really need another higher speed computer? or buying the same movie over again oon blueray dvd?.We all can do something . We only need to come out of hiding and do it.
Again Thank You pizzadorf and jungleboy
genaman
The problem may start with us, genaman et. al., but it will not be solved by individuals acting independently: it will ONLY be solved by collective action. One major step that the US and other countries could take is removing all the perverse subsidies that exist. It is estimated, for example, that gasoline is–directly and indirectly–subsidized to the tune of $5-$15 per gallon. There’s no way that individual action could possibly have the same impact as eliminating that one subsidy.