US has most climate-change deniers of any country surveyed
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks/where-in-the-world-is-climate-denial-most-prevalentThis questionnaire asked whether climate change is largely the result of human activity.
In contrast, China, Argentina, Italy, Spain, Turkey, France and India each had more than 80 percent of their respondents say they agreed with the idea of human-caused climate change.
These results supported a finding in a report conducted in 2011 by James Painter from the University of Oxford and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that suggested that climate skepticism was predominately an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.
The report also suggested that the variations in perspectives in places like the United States, Britain and Australia might be caused in part by the way climate science has been polarized and politicized, especially in the news media, within those countries.
Leaders among the climate change denial movements outside of the United States include Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party; Christopher Monckton, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley; and Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia.
dem dare furriners just be unedumicated!
Igel
(35,359 posts)That's the default assumption, so there's little point in continuing in that vein.
In other cases it's self-serving bias.
"Climate change is human-driven. We, of course, are not responsible. In fact, we can use that to get stuff, whether psychological or real. Psychological--we know that those nasty, wealthy, oppressor anglos like the French and Germans are even more nasty than we suspected. But perhaps we can get them to give us billions of dollars to help us become wealthier. Otherwise we will contribute to global warming, but it's not our fault we want to be prosperous."
"Climate change is not human-driven. If it were, we would then be responsible for something that's probably very bad. That means we have been irresponsible and our self-image is incorrect--in fact, perhaps we should do something that would hurt our lifestyle, prosperity, or the amount of wealth we have."
Even among those who agree that it's anthropogenic you get a lot of people that fit the description of that last paragraph. It's not their fault, since they've had the right attitudes for a long time and been saying something must be done. Instead, it's the fault of their domestic political foes. (For many, the facts aren't really important; what's important is the psychology of blame and self-justification, and that pretty much determines what claims they're willing and ready to accept as fact.)
merrily
(45,251 posts)and more around the issues that do actually divide them.
All of that has been working very well for politicians and the rich, aka the plutonomy, but not so well for the rest of us.