Demographics
Residential
demographics affect perceptions of global warming. In China, 77% of those who live in urban areas are aware of global warming compared to 52% in rural areas. This trends is mirrored in India with 49% to 29% awareness, respectively.
Of those countries where at least half the population are aware of global warming, those with the greatest proportion believing that global warming is due to human activities spend more on energy.
In Europe, individuals under fifty-five are more likely to perceive both "poverty, lack of food and drinking water" and climate change as a serious threat than individuals over fifty-five. Male individuals are more likely to perceive climate change as a threat than female individuals. Managers, white collar workers, and students are more likely to perceive climate change as a greater threat than house persons and retired individuals.
Political identification
In the United States, support for environmental protection was relatively
non-partisan in the past. Republican
Theodore Roosevelt established national parks whereas Democrat
Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the
Soil Conservation Service. This non-partisanship began to erode during the 1980s when the
Reagan administration described environmental protection as an economic burden. Views over global warming began to seriously diverge between Democrats and Republicans during the negotiations that led up to the creation of the
Kyoto Protocol in 1998. In a 2008 Gallup poll of the American public, 76% of Democrats and only 41% of Republicans said that they believed global warming was already happening. The gap between the opinions of the
political elites, such as members of Congress, tends to be even more polarized.
In Europe, opinion is not strongly divided among
left and right parties. Although European political parties on the left, and
Green parties, strongly support measures to address climate change, conservative European political parties maintain similar sentiments, most notably in Western and Northern Europe. For example, France's center-right
President Chirac pushed key environmental and climate change policies in France in 2005–2007, and conservative German administrations (under the
Christian Democratic Union and
Christian Social Union) in the past two decades have supported
European Union climate change initiatives. In the period after former President Bush announced that the United States was leaving the
Kyoto Treaty, European media and newspapers on both the left and right criticized the move. The conservative Spanish
La Razón, the
Irish Times,
Irish Independent, the Danish
Berlingske Tidende, and the Greek
Kathimerini all condemned the Bush administration's decision along with left-leaning newspapers.
In Norway, a 2013 poll conducted by TNS Gallup found that 92% of those who vote for the
Socialist Left Party and 89% of those who vote for the
Liberal Party believe that global warming is caused by humans, while the percentage who held this belief is 60% among voters for the
Conservative Party and 41% among voters for the
Progress Party.
The shared sentiments between the political left and right on climate change further illustrate the divide in perception between the United States and Europe on climate change. As an example, conservative German Prime Ministers
Helmut Kohl and
Angela Merkel have differed with other parties in Germany only on "how to meet emissions reduction targets, not whether or not to establish or fulfill them."
Ideology
In the United States,
ideology is an effective predictor of
party identification, where
conservatives are more prevalent among
Republicans, and
moderates and
liberals among
independents and
Democrats. A shift in ideology is often associated with in a shift in political views. For example, when the number of conservatives rose from 2008 to 2009, the number of individuals who felt that global warming was being exaggerated in the media also rose.
