Poll: World supports global warming action

COLLEGE PARK, Md., July 29 (UPI) -- A modest majority of people worldwide want their countries to do more to address climate change, a poll released Wednesday indicates.

The poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found citizens of all but three of the 19 nations surveyed believed climate change should be a high priority of their governments, but most did not think their governments were serious enough about the issue.

"Many government leaders express worry that their publics are not really ready to absorb the hardships that would come with addressing climate change," Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, said in the report. "But most people around the world appear to be impatient that their government is not doing enough to address the problem of climate change."

The survey found solid support for action on global warming in industrialized nations, including 62 percent in China, 52 percent in the United States and 56 percent in Russia.

Worldwide, 60 percent of nations favor increased action on climate change compared to 12 percent who want the subject to have a lower priority and 18 percent who consider the current priority to be about right.

The Maryland pollster queried 18,578 people in the 19 nations that comprise 60 percent of the world's population. The survey was conducted from April 4 to July 9 and had a margin of error of 3 to 4 percentage points.