Stockholm – The decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change comes as a ComRes opinion survey shows a majority of Americans consider climate change a ‘global catastrophic risk’ - and that they want more – not less – global co-operation to tackle global risks.
The eight country survey was commissioned last month by the Global Challenges Foundation in Stockholm. It found that:
Mats Andersson, Vice Chairman of the Global Challenges Foundation said:
“The fact that climate change features in the public mind alongside weapons of mass destruction and political conflict shows that people in the United States as well as elsewhere want an urgent response from their leaders to tackle global warming and stop it tipping over into catastrophic levels.
“The decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement represents a fundamental misunderstanding of where the US public are now on climate change and how seriously they regard the risk.
“Something has shifted in the past couple of years with people waking up to the realities of climate change. Political leaders should realise they have a strong mandate to act and that their actions now can shape our future for the next 10,000 years and beyond.”
The ComRes survey was released along with the Global Challenges Foundation’s Annual Report, Global Catastrophic Risks 2017 which includes sections on climate change.
For more information and interviews please contact: Helen Palmer, Weber Shandwick on +44(0)7912 242394 or [email protected]
An online survey of 8,101 adults aged between 18 and 64 was conducted across: Australia (1,000), Brazil (1,018), China (1,031), Germany (1,001), India (1,013), South Africa (1,038), the United Kingdom (1,000) and the United States (1,000) between 27 April and 10 May 2017. The data were weighted to be nationally representative of the population in each of the country by age, gender and region. Full data tables are available at www.comresglobal.com
The Global Challenges Foundation is calling for new thinking around how global catastrophic risks are managed by the international community. The US$5million Global Challenges Prize 2017 – A New Shape is an open competition, seeking ideas for new models of global governance capable of tackling serious global risks. It is open for entries until September 30, 2017. So far the prize competition has received 11,593 registrations of interest from 183 countries and 200 submitted entries from 60 countries.