The World is Concerned about Climate Change and Wants Action at COP21

People around the world see climate change as the single greatest threat the world faces and they want governments to do something about it. According to a recent poll, people are more concerned about climate change than they are about global economic instability and the Islamic State militant group.

The survey by Pew Research Center found that climate change was identified as the most serious global threat in almost half (19 of 40) of the countries polled. This was particularly true in Latin America and Africa. A total of 45,000 respondents were asked to identify the most concerning global threats.

Only the US, Israel and Spain singled out Iran’s nuclear programme as the highest threat. Other issues that are of concern for Americans are tensions between Russia and its neighbours and cyber-attacks. The study was conducted from March 25 to May 27, 2015.

As reported in Reuters, another study showed that almost 80 percent of people worldwide are perturbed about global warming and want tough action to fix the problem.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said the findings were "important proof" of public support in both rich and poor nations for a U.N. deal to limit climate change due to be agreed in Paris in December. "Action now is necessary," she told a news conference.

Citing a desire to avert extreme weather events, more than 90 percent of those surveyed wanted the upcoming Paris meeting to set some form of legally binding goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2100.