New Yorkers Worried about Global Warming
Mar 7th, 2008 by Jervey
The Times’ City Room blog was first with the results of a Columbia and Yale Universities study on public perspective on global warming of those of us in the five boroughs. Are we hopelessly aloof or Woody Allen-level neurotic? It’s well worth reading Sewell Chan’s whole post, but here are some telling stats:
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- 78 percent of New Yorkers were convinced that global warming is happening, and of that number, 82 percent believed that climate change is caused mainly by human activities or caused equally by humans and natural changes.
- 69 percent said it was likely that parts of New York City would need to be abandoned because of rising sea levels over the next 50 years.
- 60 percent said they were personally worried about global warming.
- 30 percent believed dangerous effects of global warming were imminent within the next 10 years.
- 22 percent believed that global warming has already had dangerous effects on the city.
- Large majorities of New Yorkers said that global warming would cause more heat waves (85 percent); energy blackouts (79 percent); worse storms, hurricanes and tornadoes (79 percent); increased rates of disease (72 percent); and flooding of subways, tunnels and airports (70 percent). [City Room]
So, yeah, we’ve got some nice Woody Allen anxiety going on this. I’d argue we’re just being realistic. The report can be seen in its entirety here.
Revkin’s got his quick take here.
And Chris Neidl at Solar One noted it too.