Friday, December 7, 2007

Climate Change Polls Summary

WorldPublicOpinion.org has a summary of recent polls on attitudes around the world toward climate change:

A new analysis by WorldPublicOpinion.org of 11 recent international polls conducted around the world shows widespread and growing concern about climate change. Large majorities believe that human activity causes climate change and favor policies designed to reduce emissions.

In most countries, majorities see an urgent need for significant action. For example, a recent poll for the BBC by GlobeScan and the Program for International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that majorities in 15 out of 21 countries felt that it was necessary to take “major steps, starting very soon” to address climate change. In the other six countries polled, opinion was divided over whether “major” or “modest steps” were needed. Only small minorities thought no steps were necessary.

The analysis included polls from the BBC/GlobeScan/PIPA, the Pew Research Center, GlobeScan, WorldPublicOpinion.org/Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the German Marshall Fund, and Eurobarometer. (Link to report.)


Seems like this data would provide a nice starting point for a global public goods provision analysis. Does it make sense to study how regime structure mediates the way public interest is channeled into action? How would one structure the analysis? Or does it only make sense to study dynamics associated with responses to climate change in terms of global-level bargaining? Or maybe a two-level game framework would make sense---could we use these data, interacted with domestic regime, to estimate the size of the domestic "win-set"?...

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