More young Republicans worried about human damage to planet.A new report by Amsterdam-based Glocalities, which canvassed views worldwide, showed the number of U.S. Republicans who said they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement “I worry about the damage humans cause the planet” rose by 11 percentage points to 58% between 2014 and 2019.
The number of Republican voters aged 18-34 who are worried about the issue rose by 18 percentage points to 67%, said the poll, which also showed a 10-percentage-point increase among all U.S. Republicans who said they tried “to live eco-consciously.”
Four waves of Glocalities surveys among 189,996 respondents from 20 countries carried out between 2014 and 2019 revealed that a majority of people worldwide is united by a rise of environmental concern. In 2014, 71% of people globally were worried about the damage that humans cause to the planet. This figure has risen steadily to 77% in 2019, the data gathering found.
‘’In recent years, the USA has had its share of environmental disasters, think of the devastating wildfires in California and the flooding due to increasingly heavy rainfall and hurricanes,” said Martijn Lampert, research director Glocalities, which advises on behavioral psychology and marketing research. “By denying climate change so strongly, [President] Trump is generating even more attention and exposure for the topic, while only minorities among his fan base think there is no need to worry about the harm people cause to the planet.’’
“If Donald Trump keeps on denying climate change and refrains from standing up for the environment he won’t be able to grow among the young and be heavily reliant on older generations of republican voters for winning again,” Lampert said.
President Trump in 2017 pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, saying at the time that developing and more recently developed nations, such as economic giant China, didn’t pull their weight when it came to climate policies. Some lawmakers at the time said the cost to the U.S. economy and poorer citizens from reducing fossil fuel use for heat and transportation, at least in the short term, was worrisome.
And: Quinnipiac poll shows majority of voters say climate change is ‘emergency.’ A majority of registered voters nationwide, 56%, say that climate change is an emergency, while 42% do not. Democrats who say that climate change is an emergency registers at 84% to 14%, while independents say 63% to 36%. Republicans say that climate change is not an emergency by 81% to 18%, in this poll. Among 18 to 34 year old voters, who may expect to be the most affected by climate change, 74% say that climate change is an emergency, while 24% do not.
Voters also think that the United States isn’t doing enough to address climate change, with 67% of voters in the poll saying more needs to be done. That’s a new high since the question was first asked by the Quinnipiac University poll in December 2015.
“As fires in the Amazon rainforest serve as just the latest concern about the planet, there is a sense of urgency about climate change among American voters,” said Mary Snow, polling analyst for the Quinnipiac University poll. “More than half call it an emergency.”
Climate fight requires a Net Zero ministry in the U.K.: chief scientist. People must use less transport, eat less red meat, buy fewer clothes and expedite technology to help in the climate-change fight if the U.K. is to come close to halting greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, says its chief environment scientist, Sir Ian Boyd, in an interview with BBC.
He calls for a Net Zero ministry to vet the policies of all government departments in the way the Brexit ministry vets Brexit-related decisions. Boyd warned that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge. Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, Boyd declined to comment. Johnson has already been accused by environmentalists of talking up electric cars whilst reputedly planning a cut in driving taxes that would increase emissions and undermine the electric car market.
Opinion: Finance is slowly turning green, but fossil fuels still receive too much support
Light-rail proposals scrapped in Durham, N.C., and Baltimore, but not Phoenix. The high-population-growth Arizona city, in which car culture has dominated, voted this week to continue financing expansion of the region’s light-rail system. Unofficial election results posted on the city’s website showed that about 62% of voters wanted to continue financing an expanded rail system.
The vote in Phoenix, which has wrestled with poor air quality, intermittent droughts, in addition to traffic congestion, comes after decades of dizzying growth that ranks it as the nation’s fifth-largest city with a population of about 1.6 million. Mayor Kate Gallego, who has supported expanding the 28-mile rail system, described the election results as essential to the city’s future, the New York Times reported.