Public Opinion on Obama’s International Priorities
January 21st, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Yesterday’s Financial Times reported the results of a new poll that asked people in a number of countries about what priorities they’d like to see President Obama take on in the international arena. There is a remarkable degree of congruence across countries, with (no surprise) the economy in first place everywhere. Climate change receives considerable support as well, certainly enough for action to occur. Of course the key question is, what action?
January 21st, 2009 at 7:39 am
Seems to me that there have got to be things that are good for the economy AND good for the climate. Renewable energy technology(for mitigation)
projects to restore our rivers (for adaptation), tree planting projects (for mitigation).
This is not an “either or” but rather a challenging “and” for all of us. Perhaps we could discuss a “top ten” economic fixes or tweaks that will also help mitigation or adaptation?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:37 am
Eyeballing the graph, it looks like 3-4% of US respondents answered “Tackling the threat of climate change”
How do you go from that to: “Climate change receives considerable support as well, certainly enough for action to occur.”?
January 21st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
solman-
Well, climate change is 2nd or 3rd or 4th or the list, the government takes all sorts of actions on topics at a lower priority than 2nd, 3rd, or4th. Consider that the “other category” includes topics that (each) received a lower ranking and included Iraq, Afghanistan, Itaq, all of which will receive political attention. Simply being on this list means that the subject has plenty of political support for action. But again, the real question is “what action”?
January 21st, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Since it would be political suicide to propose serious carbon taxes during this economic crisis, about the only actions I see happening is more bloviating by the liberals and environmental-extremists and MANY more peer-reviewed “scientific” papers on how “climate change” is causing every negative phenomenon known to mankind. Like kidney disease: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm One that links cancer to AGW is probably imminent. OOps, that has already been done: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cancer%20list.htm