do americans care about global warming?

Question

What is the general consensus about the subject in the u.S?
From an outside perspective it seems you couldn't give a damn, but this can't be the case surely. The UK is taking steps in the right direction, but things are slow..

The MET office (British meterological institution) is conducting an experiment by getting people to run simulations of how the earth will warm up. I think hundreds of thouands of people r takin part. It will provide the met office with a good guide to how much the earth really warm up over the next century, perhaps then the spectics and doubters will listen. Nobody doubts the earth naturally warms up, but it has never warmed at the rate it is at the moment. Go to the bbc website and go to the weather section if u wanna take part in experiment.

Answer 1

Most Americans are only concerned about cheap fuel and whether or not their electric toothbrushes are still working..........unfortunately the majority are not aware of just what damage will occur if this problem is not addressed....they will of course receive a rude awakening when their weather patterns change as a result of their indifference....the mid-west will become hotter and the grain-growing belts will have severe water shortages, hence grain production will almost cease.....hurricanes will be more severe, such as more Cat 5 storms causing complete devastation and in most higher east coast areas there will be continual flooding. As the heat increases to rise and the polar caps become affected Florida will disappear under water and many low-level inlets of the southern states will be swamped..but they seem oblivious to it and just change to another of their 100 TV channels to forget it. If not addressed very soon, we will all suffer..what will it take for our so-called leaders to start doing something.....nature of course, will soon take her own action and then we can all look out.

Answer 2

The shortcoming of this question is asking: what do Americans think? Where is America? What is it? Is it only a nation with defined boundaries? Where are those boundaries? The United States has spawned the most fearsome example of market driven ethics that the world has ever seen. This ethic has been exported all around the world. So where is "America"? The traditional sense of national boundaries is very outdated.

More to the point, think of America as a variety of entities loosely associated: the people, the corporations, and the government. The corporations are multinational, and largely driven by short-term profit motive. They have the strongest pull with the governmental powers, which holds a certain quantity of the wealth of the public. The public has the right to vote for or against the government, but only in so far as they have enough information. But where to get information? From a corporate run media source.

The United States (as a people) are by far the greatest polluters in the world if you measure the amount of the Earth used per person. It is all about getting reliable information to sway the public's mind. A fifty-year cold war left us with a consumerist ideal, and that was the ammunition used to persecute that war. Now, like a rice field full of land mines, we are learning that the results of that war will be killing others and us for many generations to come.

What is the hurdle? Media. 100 channels of television any time you want. Ignorance, the power to ignore a problem, is the last real hurdle. The science is in place, when there is the will to use it, the correction can begin. Getting that will to manifest is the uphill battle: the subject has to sell something people want to be put in popular media. The news agencies sell blood and terror (Katrina went a long way towards waking up many many people in the United States,) sitcoms need to be funny etc. Much of current advertising dollars are spent on pharmaceuticals, why? A very large number of "media consumers" are over 50 years old, and they have the strongest buying power. That is what is dictating what is put forth in the media: buying power. Media is the essential source of information. When environment can influence buying power, it will be in the front of the mind of nearly every citizen of the United States.

Answer 3

Even if it cared, the US is institutionally and constitutionally incapable of doing anything practical to address the problem. It is also beset by the sort of denial that is so commonly seen here.

There is no doubt that the Earth is warming, and only some doubt about the extent to which mankind is contributing. But nothing is going to be done to stop it.

What the US could more fruitfully do is start to plan for what is undistputed - the range of temperature rises that will be seen in the next 100 years. Whatever their cause, it is now certain that they will happen.

This means that we will lose New York, Washington, Seattle, LA and other cities. The US should be planning relocations now.

The grain belt will also shift, or disappear altogether, as the climate shifts. We need other sources of food.

Need I go on...

Answer 4

My question to you is why do you believe or care about a theory that uses faulty data from people with political agendas. THey use the most skewed data from all the reports to scare people into believing things they say such as the Canadian study that say the Earth's temp will rise 15 degrees int he next 10 yrs. Even the guy that started all this bull said that it is ok to exagerate to accomplish their political agenda. That agenda is to weaken the western world not just the U.S. What will the Uk use for oil if you switch to biofuels and a large scale war breaks out. You will lose because you won't be able to sufficently fuel your jets, tanks , ships or trucks,. Remember the Nazis tried synthetic fuels in WW2 but that fell way short of what they needed. And why is it America's falt all the time anyway China is the worst polluter in the world right now and none of you Global warming hypocrits say boo about them. SO Bugger off.

Answer 5

Well, many Americans, it seems, even doubt that global warming is really hapening. As for those who do believe it is actually hapening, like the US government, it's pretty much like the story of the guy who got diagnosed with lungs cancer: He just kept on smoking his 20 cigs a day because, by the time it gets really serious, surely, science will have found a cure....
On a more serious note, although various environmental groups are doing what they can in the US, it will take a very long time to change people's mind and accept the seriousness of the issue. In the meantime, it is crucial for people outside of the U.S and North America generally speaking to stay focussed and to take action to minimise the effects of global warming in any way that they can. A disaster is unavoidable. It is happening as we speak, but the magnitude of that disaster depends a lot on our daily actions. Now is not the time to point fingers and argue about who's doing what, but a time for everyone, all over the world, who cares, even a bit, to realise that good practise begets good practiseand that every step in the right direction, will invariably encourage others to also take action. Recycle waste, avoid using your car as much as possible, make sure your house is properly insulated, etc and stay informed, join an environment support group and vote for political parties that support environment preservation.

Answer 6

Global warming a sinister and developing dilemma that the world is faced with these days. How are you with suffocating? Population growth, more trash to burn, more aircraft in the air, more cars being built, industries polluting the air, and we're sitting back and can't do a darn thing about it. No matter what we do there's going to be another country that doesn't follow through. No one wants to. Welll, the earth will soon tire of it. It took care of the dinosaurs and it will take care of this species that dna created in this time period. The earth will take care of it's own . It has for millions of years. There will be a destruction point of human kind and we will cause it. It's already beginning and it's increasing quicker than you known.

Answer 7

Yes, it is a concern. Yes, many things have been done - and like the rest of the world, progress in that direction is slow. An infrastructure the size of the U.S. takes a while to change, it cannot happen in just a couple of years. Recycling in our bigger cities is the norm, air pollution has dropped over 30% in the past ten years due to fewer dirty coal-burning plants (stack filters have been put in most of the plants now), and we are again licensing nuclear generators.

"From an outside perspective" - well, exactly how do you get that perspective? If you're getting it from the main media, then you're getting a skewed outlook. Most of them dislike the country that gives them the right to point fingers, and they are a major polluter with newsprint and ink manufacturing.

Answer 8

Not much, all they have to do is move North and put Canadians on reservations. A better question might be what percent of Americans believe in G. warming, only 30 years ago they were teaching at schools that we would have global cooling and the next Ice Age soon. They were probably just as likely to be right.

Answer 9

I have lived in both conutries and think there is equal caring on both parts. The UK does not hear about the things America is doing and America does not hear about what the UK is doing.

What really matters is we ALL try and do things to help solve this.

On the other hand this may be the time of the earths lifecycle where there is minute warming again. It's happened before just as ice ages have happened before.

What we need to think about is pollution- so all those smokers of cigs and funny stuff STOP IT!

Answer 10

nicely, first the u . s . is an somewhat puzzling position to assert what human beings can and can want to't do, man or woman freedom is between the necessary concepts the country replaced into in conserving with. To bypass regulations like that would want to require an truly solid reason, truly solid public help, and the blessing of the finest courtroom. Now, so some distance as why not all and diverse believes global warming is man made, is somewhat extra complicated. in spite of everything, the declare that global warming is man made would first require that CO2 be shown to have significant consequences on global temp. do not overlook that atmospheric water is both a extra effective eco-friendly abode gas and in larger concentrations than CO2. It also calls for an explaination for why temp kinds coincide with sunspot kinds. also it has to have an explaination for why our contemporary time has the utmost [CO2] yet not the utmost temperatures. it would even ought to exhibit that temp enhance is led to through [CO2] enhance and under no circumstances the opposite. finally, it has to exhibit that man made CO2 is the significant contributor to atmospheric CO2 and under no circumstances naturaly occuring CO2 which contain from volcanic activity or CO2 from the sea. all issues considered it really is not an consumer-friendly declare to make or shield that global warming is led to through guy, and diverse human beings understand this inspite of in the experience that they don't understand the records of why. different a lot less contributing elements are the price performance of recycling (both in words of money and ability), how the electrical energy in various elements is produced ( I stay in a community the position the electrical energy is offered through a hydroelectric plant, how would the electrical energy i take advantage of make a contribution to CO2?) and the feasability of lowering CO2 (the commercial equipment of the u . s . makes use of merely in time shiping, which calls for a consistent bypass of automobiles, without them the already fragile economic equipment would conflict through a substantial blow) Sorry for the lengthy submit :)

Answer 11

I would say, yes, Americans care about global warming (and the global cooling fear that preceded it in the 1900's).
We have created a federal bureau called the Environmental Protection Agency that sucks up millions of our tax dollars in order to create regulations to protect/clean our air and environment.
They, in turn, impose fines on corporations and other entities within our country that violate these regulations.
We allow our state governments to create regulations regarding emissions from our cars as well as energy and water usage.

The truth is, the U.S. leads the way in caring about this planet and our environment while third world countries and nations that are industrializing are creating the majority of manmade pollution and yet are never held accountable for this.

MEANWHILE, the true culprit for this supposed, and unconfirmed, global warming is unstoppable and unassailable by any regulations, fines or any other man made efforts. That culprit is "mother nature."

The amount of man-made pollutants generated in the past century are miniscule compared to the amount spewed into the atmosphere in matter of minutes by Mount Pinatubo. Volcanos, trees, cow flatulence and other natural causes are more responsible for any global warming (if it really is occuring and isn't just a cyclical change in the atmosphere).