Global Warming and the United States?

Question

Why the people in the United States, the only country in the world that produces 25% of carbon dioxide, are still so ignorant of the global warming problem, are still so stubborn when they choose to drive to a store that is next to their house?

Answer 1

The short answer is money, politics and religion.

The long aswer is...
We had a republican congress until just month and still have a president owned by oil company and defense interests. We have a religious majority, many of whom take the bible literally. Some of them go so far as to believe that global warming is evidence of the rapture and it's god's will. So we have oil money and a religious influence doing everything they can to confuse and obfuscate the issues, until people just don't know who to believe. I don't think it's all about stubbornness, or even mostly. I think it's more about intellectual laziness and about the arrogance of the ignorant and uneducated that think if they can't figure out what to believe after 5 minutes of reading that it's ok to believe whatever is most convenient. It's especially easy for religious fundamentalist to believe whatever they want, since they've had so much practice ignoring the evidence for evolution in favor of creationism. Of course they don't realize it's one thing to believe whatever you want about evolution and quite another when it's a question of the quality of life on the planet for the next 500 or so years.


I just watched some video clips from a recent 60-minute prime time TV show. Here's the URL. http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/26/global_warming . The last clip was particularly telling. There was Dr. Robert Correll, one of the world's top authorities on climate change on prime time TV , telling us that,
"The planet is out of balance. ... We now have really unchallenged science, in my opinion. ... And you have the preponderance of evidence across the board among all the disciplines, that the warming we're seeing today is substantially coming from human effect. .... What's different today is the rate at which this is occurring. ... (It's) so much more rapid ... than virtually any time we've seen in the history of the planet." -- http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/scp_v3/viewer/index.php?pid=16598&rn=49750&cl=1414771&ch=334515&src=news (Warning - you'll have to watch a 15-sec ad first)

The good news was there was a poll at the URL which said that 78% now believe mankind is responsible for GW. So, I think the tide is turning over here. And last week I read the oil companies were conceding this too, shortly followed by Bush's State of the Union Address where he essentially did the same thing.

Some of us in the US are working very hard to educate and remove some of this ignorance, one person at a time. GreenPeace has recently put up a website showing the distrubtion of oil money from ExxonMobile. Here's a page of it: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/em.php . This is making it easier for me to reply to the bogus skeptics' claims.

Answer 2

below the Bush administration, the U. S. has formed a team to combat worldwide warming that has something Kyoto in no way had: over 50% of the polluters. It includes the USA of united statesa., China, Japan, India, and Australia. the assumption is to have a reasonable/attainable plan; no longer something that sounds intense-high quality yet is ineffective. the U. S. does no longer avert it yet particularly needs no area of efforts that punish the USA of united statesa. yet enable coming up worldwide places set to quickly pass the USA of united statesa. in carbon output pollute as much as they want nor can a US President sign a compact that is aimed to wreck the U. S. economy so others, tremendously continentals, may well be greater aggressive on the USA of united statesa.'s cost with out being impeached. i'm particularly shocked that somebody as stupid as Al Gore even is familiar with of of that treaty; the media particularly in no way suggested it. i assume it would have made President Bush look too good for his or her liking.

Answer 3

It's all our fault... you have no contribution whatsoever.

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" It is because the government is making an effort to suppress all information about global warming."
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That is total bs. NASA, NOAA, http://www.usgcrp.gov/, the National Science and Technology Council, and many more government funded programs study and deal with climate change.

The US Government has been spending our taxpayer dollars on this at least since 1990 when congress authorised it.

Answer 4

It's all about the money, honey. A few people own the oil companies and pharmaceutical companies, and they are sucking every drop of sweat they can get out of you and me, in the form of money.

Millions of tons of crap DAILY into the atmosphere is nothing to sneeze at. Pun intended.

We are screwing ourselves over for a buck.
Shooting ourselves in the herd.
Stepping on our own ducks.
Cutting off our nose to spite our finch.
Kicking ourselves in the aardvark.

We're ruining it for everybody and everything, and people who can't accept it are three fries short of a Happy Meal.
Have a nice day.

Answer 5

It is because the government is making an effort to suppress all information about global warning. A lot them simply don't believe it is true, or they think it might be part of a cylical process that has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses.

Answer 6

Because some of us know you can't change the weather by not driving to the store!

Answer 7

we are a greedy, decadent, lazy nation