Why do black and Latino Americans support climate action so much more than whites?
Why do black and Latino Americans support climate action so much more than whites?
By Chris Mooney and Peyton Craighill December 1
[font size=1]
Hundreds of participants attend a candlelight vigil, a day before the inauguration of Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, Sunday, June 30, 2014. Negotiators from more than 190 countries will meet in Lima for two weeks to work on drafts for a global climate deal that is supposed to be adopted next year in Paris. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) [/font]
This Monday in Lima, Peru, the next stage of international climate negotiations opens, buoyed by recent pledges by the U.S. and China to cap their emissions. The setting certainly doesn't hurt matters -- unlike English speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Australia, the countries of South and Central America have not traditionally nourished much homegrown global warming skepticism.
"I think there’s a good case to be made that what’s happening in Latin America is out in front of any other region of the world," says Lou Leonard, vice president for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund. As examples, Leonard cites Chile's recent passage of a carbon tax, Costa Rica's plans to become carbon neutral, and Mexico's ambitious climate law.
But it's not just Latin America -- Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. also stand out as among the more green of demographic groups on questions of climate change. Such is the upshot of data from a June Washington Post-ABC News poll, which we re-examined on the eve of the Lima meeting.
In the poll, both Hispanics/Latino Americans and Africans Americans were more likely than U.S. whites to say climate change is a very serious problem confronting the country:
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/01/why-do-black-and-latino-americans-support-climate-action-so-much-more-than-whites/