Dear Jim, this is an understandable concern and a question that many people in the US have to be asking themselves. While I’m by no means the authority on global climate relations, I’d be happy to share my opinions.

First of all, while many Americans are demonstrating additional efforts to ‘go green’ and reduce their carbon footprint, there are still those out there that strongly lobby that climate change is a hoax or ‘liberal myth’. Unfortunately these people not only disbelieve any scientific proof, they don’t believe there is anything they could do to stop climate change (even if it were real). Some people don’t grasp the concept that human beings could affect an entity as large as the earth…

In fact, a Gallup poll back in March showed that 41% of Americans think global warming is ‘exaggerated’. Even more shocking, this number has consistently risen from 28% in 2004 when a majority of respondents said that climate change was ‘underestimated’.

So I think before we stress out too much about other countries not pulling their weight, we should be working to educate some of our fellow compatriots. I’m not advocating forcing beliefs on anyone, but I view climate change as a fact and an issue, not an opinion or belief. But as a whole, the US population seems to be less concerned about climate change than many other countries. In a recent poll, out of all the countries polled it was found that all the other polled countries (including the UK, France, India, China, Chile, Mexico, Iraq and Palestine) view climate change as more of an urgent issue than Americans do. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest priority), Americans gave climate change a 4.71 while China rated the issue an 8.86.

All that being said, it’s impossible to focus on a long-term solution unless we have a majority of world powers (and at least a significant portion of the general population) on board and this really becomes a different issue altogether. It will, without a doubt, take a combined and sustained effort on all of our parts to make a significant change.

- Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP