Independent: Extreme weather wakes US up to climate change

[arenean]

Very interesting one in today's Independent:

Extreme weather wakes US up to climate change

Some bits:

Despite the growing evidence of the economic cost of climate change on the US, opinion remains polarised. Peter Larsen, the author of the Alaska report, pointed out that while "Alaska is warming more quickly than any other place on the planet right now," his concerns were usually greeted with scepticism."On more than one occasion I had people laugh at me on the phone," he said, when he had asked colleagues elsewhere in the US how much climate change is affecting infrastructure.

The Pew survey bears out the fact that concern about the environment is still sharply lower in the US than in any other advanced industrial country, with the exception of the UK. In every other Western European country large majorities view global warming as a serious problem, ranging from 57 per cent in Italy to 70 per cent in Spain.

The survey found that the Chinese are far more likely than Americans to cite environmental problems as a major global danger (70 per cent against 37 per cent). Worldwide, most people in the surveyed countries agree that the environment is in trouble and most blame the US and, to a much more limited degree, China.