John’s Blog/Newsletter: SEA LEVEL RISE NOW

New Poll: Americans Alarmed by Global Warming Triples

The latest annual poll by Yale and George Mason Universities on public attitude about global warming has taken a dramatic turn upwards. As shown in the bubble graph above, 31% now identify as “Alarmed” compared to just 11% five years ago – that’s essentially TRIPLING. Combined with the 26% identifying as “Concerned”, a majority of Americans now realize the threat of climate change. In comparison, at the other end of the spectrum, the categories of “doubtful” and “dismissive” have both decreased since 2014.

Climate change, aka Global Warming has long been an emotional topic but usually ranks far below the traditional hot topics of the economy, health care, social security, foreign policy / war, and immigration. It will be interesting to see how this new heating up of climate concern among Americans translates into the campaign and election for the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

Those that are concerned about the warming planet would do well to tell those running for office that climate change is among their top priorities.

For more fascinating insights, check out the report “Climate Change in the American Mind”

By John Englander January 20, 2020 Sea Level Rise

3 Comments

Simon MacArthur

- 5 years ago Reply

If Australia doesn’t do it for you, nothing will. A billion dead animals and an entire town forced to evacuate to the beach while their houses burned. Keep shoveling that coal!

Richard Bailey

- 5 years ago Reply

Finally, enough Americans are concerned to do something about climate disruption. Sadly it took 5 years to reach 57% being alarmed or concerned. During that time, carbon levels in the air rose more than 10 parts per million. They continue to rise at more than 2 per year.

Now that we have a consensus, what can be done to protect our children’s future?

The long term, economy wide, efficient, socially just, bipartisan solution is to extract a fee from fossil fuel companies that starts low ($15/ton so as to not shock the economy) but rises rapidly every year (+$10/ton), and which returns 100% of the money in equal shares to every citizen. Carbon levels would drop dramatically (far more than with the Paris Accord). This simple solution is better than complex cap and trade schemes and would be adopted by other nations due to the border adjustment which would tax imports that did not include the fee. Increasingly, Americans support a fee levied on fossil fuel companies, and several bills now in Congress include this. Of these, HR 763 is the best.

John Moon

- 5 years ago Reply

Richard Bailey, including the tariffs on imports that would encourage (or force) trade partners to adopt a comparable “Fee and Dividend” approach is critical. As a citizen of Brexitstan (The UK) trade tariffs are near the top of our subject list at the moment. I’m expecting The UK to import 40% of the food stuffs and 40% of the energy we consume (including DC electricity from four neighbours) this year. Factor in imports of manufactured goods and limiting the “Fee” to fossil fuels directly would make the idea unworkable. Ultimately every sovereign state making it “Economy Wide” is key, but one large economy has to go first!