Abstract

Surveys of public opinions on climate change found that a majority of American respondents regarded global warming as a critical or an important threat . Given this consensus, one might expect that a majority of Americans are ready to take immediate action to deal with the environmental crisis. However, when they were asked whether we should begin taking steps now, only 43% of American respondents said yes; 54% of them chose either the option “until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs,” or the option “global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem ..