Some 13 per cent of Americans have not heard of global warming.
Although the United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases – the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India – 13 per cent of US citizens say they had never heard or read anything about global warming.
The findings are the result of a new 46-country survey by ACNielsen Europe. The report indicates that 57 per cent of people around the world considered global warming to be a “very serious problem” and a further 34 per cent rated it a “serious problem”.
People in Latin America were most worried, while US citizens were least concerned with just 42 per cent rating global warming “very serious”.
Almost all climate scientists say that temperatures are creeping higher because of heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels.
According to a UN report, it is at least 90 per cent probable that human activities are the main cause of warming in the past 50 years. People in China and Brazil were most convinced of the link to human activities, and Americans least convinced.
According to the survey, people living in regions vulnerable to natural disasters seemed most concerned – ranging from Latin Americans worried by damage to coffee or banana crops to people in the Czech Republic whose country was hit by floods in 2002.
In Latin America, 96 per cent of respondents said they had heard of global warming and 75 per cent rated it “very serious”.
Whereas most industrial nations have signed up for the UN’s Kyoto Protocol (which imposed conditions on emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from factories, power plants and vehicles), US President George W. Bush pulled his country out of the treaty in 2001.