Fewer Americans believe in global warming and climate change

According to a recent poll carried out in the United States, the percentage of Americans who believe in climate change has dropped in the last year.

Oh ye of uncertain faith!

As per the Washington Post-ABC News poll, the percentage has come down from 80 to 72 percent. However, even though the percentage of Americans who believe in climate change phenomena has come down, it was revealed in the poll that the majority of Americans still support limiting carbon emissions.

According to the poll, 55% of those polled think that the US should curb its carbon emissions even if the booming Indian and Chinese economies fail to do so. The poll assumes significance as the Obama administration is trying to pass a new law to curb carbon emissions and have a new international global warming pact in place.

A shift in the political sphere is expected to be the reason behind this latest skepticism in climate change. The belief that the climate change is actually happening has gone down among Republicans from 76 to 54 percent and 86 to 71 percent among independents. The dip was from 92 to 86 percent among Democrats. Of all the people polled, 53% agreed on the need for curbing carbon emissions and having trade pollution allowances in place.

The opinions of the respondents to the global warming poll ranged from “climate change is just an evolution of the nature” to “burning fossil fuels is not the reason behind global warming”. According to the poll, the people of United States might not support the new legislation that would be put forth by the Obama administration, given that the economy is going through a serious downturn.

The implementation of the new law would mean that the energy prices would go up in the short term, and this would not be appealing for Americans who are suffering from a downturn in the economy.