Climate Change Issue Higher Priority in Latin America Than US, Pew Poll Finds Luis Carlos Lopez - VOXXI
go to original June 28, 2013

Despite President Barack Obama’s efforts in promoting sweeping measures to fight climate change, a new study indicates most Americans don’t see soaring global temperatures with the same level of urgency as other countries do, particularly Latin American countries.

According to a climate change poll released by the Pew Research Center, just two out of every five people — 40 percent — in the U.S. see climate change as a major threat. This compares to a 54 percent median of all countries surveyed. In Latin American countries, that median increases to 65 percent.

Juliana Menasce Horowitz, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center and one of the authors of the report analyzing the climate change poll results, told VOXXI that North Korea’s nuclear program, Islamic extremist groups, Iran’s nuclear program and international financial stability were seen as a greater menace in the U.S. — these four outranked climate change coming in at 59, 56, 54 and 52 percent respectively.

And while a Pew Hispanic Research analyst told VOXXI that the sample of Hispanics in this climate change poll was too small to deduce any conclusions of how U.S. Latinos compared to the rest of the country’s view on climate change, many Latin American countries surveyed placed global warming as a number one concern.

According to Pew’s climate change poll, the issue is considered a top threat by the populace in Argentina (71 percent), Brazil (76 percent), El Salvador (64 percent), Venezuela (53 percent), Bolivia (65 percent), Chile (68 percent) and Mexico (52 percent).

“Climate change is more important in many different regions outside of the United States, its not just Latin America,” Horowitz said. “But Latin America in particular, is a region that has been affected by climate change a lot.”

Read the rest at VOXXI

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