The results of a new survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show that nearly 40 percent of Americans are not bothered by global warming.
Although most Americans are aware that the climate is undergoing changes, they said that they are not worried about it. Climate scientists and social experts said such notion is said to be halting the U.S. public from stipulating and obtaining the modifications needed to curb global warming.
The survey was conducted from Oct. 15-18, 2015 among American adults aged 18 and above residing in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The total numbers of participants were 1,058, of which 753 were surveyed via web and 305, via telephone.
The findings of the investigations showed that 23 percent of Americans are highly worried about global warming, 34 percent are moderately worried and 38 percent are not worried at all.
The study also investigated [pdf] on whether or not people see global warming as a moral issue. Amid the call of Pope Francis to curb climate change, only 36 percent believe that the issue has moral implications and 49 percent think otherwise.
Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication said that the sense of worrying has been absent in yearly surveys even if global temperatures have increased.
Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton University commented that global warming has not sufficiently boiled up in such a way that people would make it a priority focus.
Dana Fisher, director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland said that among the issues is the idea of how massive yet far-off and abstruse it is.
"Usually when we hear about global warming everything seems so distant," said Renata Schram, a customer service representative from Michigan. She further explained that it is hard to find data that will give people an insight about when environmental shifts such as sea level rise, will exactly happen.
Photo: Ryan Vaarsi | Flickr
