Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A while back I discussed the UN Global Poll regarding what people around the world think is important to them. At that point there were about six million respondents. The people taking the poll are asked to choose (just choose, but not rank) the six issues that matter most to them from the following list:
BETTER JOB OPPORTUNITIES
FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION AND PERSECUTION
ACTION TAKEN ON CLIMATE CHANGE
SUPPORT FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN’T WORK
ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
PROTECTING FORESTS, RIVERS AND OCEANS
RELIABLE ENERGY AT HOME
AFFORDABLE AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD
AN HONEST AND RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT
A GOOD EDUCATION
EQUALITY BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
PHONE AND INTERNET ACCESS
POLITICAL FREEDOMS
BETTER TRANSPORT AND ROADS
PROTECTION AGAINST CRIME AND VIOLENCE
BETTER HEALTHCARE
When I wrote my last post, climate change was running dead last. I went back yesterday to check on the poll. The poll is ongoing, you can go there and vote if you wish. There are now over nine million respondents … and yes, climate change is still running dead last, and well behind its nearest neighbor:
Figure 1. UN Poll results, all groups.
So I decided to drill down into the data a bit. I started by taking a look at the difference between men and women on the issues listed above:
Figure 2. Differences between men and women. Values are the percentage of respondents who listed that item among their choices for the top six. Lines connect men’s and women’s percentage of responses regarding the same issue, and are labeled only at the upper end. Blue labels and lines show items which women considered more important than men, while red items are those that men found more important. Ends of colored lines show the percentage values for women (left ends) and men (right ends).
The top three results are interesting because they are common to most groups. You can see that men put more weight on jobs and women put more weight on healthcare and education, but as Figure 1 shows, those three far out poll all the rest.
Women also put much more weight than men on affordable good food, protection against violence, and sexual equality (steep blue lines). Men on the other hand put much more weight than women on political freedom, better roads, and phone access (steep red lines).
And action on climate change is at the very bottom for both men and women.
While that was quite interesting, I actually had set out to look at the differences between the poor and rich countries on these matters. The UN divides countries into four levels, from poor to rich, or in their terms, from “Low HDI” (Human Development Index) to “Very High HDI” countries. To simplify and clarify the changes, I’ve just used the first and last categories, the poorest and the wealthiest countries. Here are those results:
Figure 3. As in Figure 2, but showing the difference between priorities of the poor and the rich.
There are some interesting things going on here. First, education is number one for men, for women, for the richest countries, and for the poorest countries. In my opinion, this shows the good judgement of the human race worldwide. Or perhaps it just means that I agree with the rest of the world … education roolz.
Next, the steepness of all the lines shows that the differences between what is important to people in rich and in poor countries are much, much greater than the differences between men and women on the same issues.
Next, the top three issues of all groups combined (Figure 1), as well as of both men and women separately (Figure 2), are education, healthcare, and jobs. All of those are far less important to the rich than the poor. Also, many other things like phones, reliable energy, good roads, and political freedoms are not very important to the rich. The people in rich countries don’t find those things important for a simple reason—generally they already have those things, so they have the luxury of worrying about other items.
Next, it’s clear how environmental concerns are something that only the rich can afford. “Protecting forests, rivers, and oceans” ranks high among the wealthiest countries, well above job opportunities … but it is second from the bottom for poor countries, just above climate and a ways below the next issue above it.
Finally, climate change. The people favoring action on climate change, almost to a man or woman, claim that they are doing this for the poor … but it appears that the poor didn’t get the memo. For them, as for the world in general, climate change is dead last. And in the poor countries, only 13% of the people mentioned it, a very small percentage. As far as the poor are concerned, they’d rather people spend money on any other of their many problems before putting it into climate change.
Moving on to the claimed beliefs of the rich countries, the following are samples of what has been the narrative for some time now. First from the US:
Saying that climate change ranks among the world’s most serious problems — such as disease outbreaks, poverty, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on all nations to respond to “the greatest challenge of our generation.”
Next, from among our Cousins across the pond, the artist currently known as “Prince” favored us with his views on the matter, viz:
Tackling global warming is the biggest challenge facing the world today, Prince Charles has said, urging governments to act on climate change before it is too late.
Finally, from Obama’s Press Spokesman Josh Earnest we have:
1. “The point the president is making is that there are many more people on an annual basis who have to confront the impact, the direct impact on their lives, of climate change, or on the spread of a disease, than on terrorism.”
2. “The point that the president is making is that when you are talking about the direct daily impact of these kinds of challenges on the daily lives of Americans, particularly Americans living in this country, that the direct impact, that more people are affected by those things than by terrorism.”
3. “I think even the Department of Defense has spoken to the significant threat that climate change poses to our national security interests, principally because of the impact it can have on countries with less well-developed infrastructure than we have.”
So the folks in the rich countries are supposed to believe that climate change is a greater danger than terrorism. However, according to the responses of nine million people, it’s the folks in the rich countries who didn’t get the memo. Rather than thinking that action on climate change is more important than terrorism and that it’s the biggest challenge facing the world, in reality action taken on climate change is less important to the folks in rich countries than sexual equality or affordable food. And action on climate change is far less important in the wealthiest countries than clean water and sanitation … this is good news. It shows that there still is some sanity on the planet. Not everyone is chanting the alarmist mantra, “The sky is falling! A couple degrees of warming will kill us all!”
Short version? If someone thinks they are helping the poor by fighting the dread CO2, according to the UN the poor would beg to differ. The people in the poor countries have shown clearly that they would prefer it if people who want to help would instead put their valuable skills and their hard-earned money and their precious time into any of the other fifteen items on the UN list before tackling climate change. Climate is not only number sixteen at the bottom of their list, it’s way below the rest in the opinion of the poor. The only reason it is not number seventeen is that there were only sixteen choices on the list …
And even the people in the richest of countries don’t buy the claim that climate change is the biggest problem facing us, nowhere near it. Heck, climate change doesn’t even make it into the top half of the issues that people in the wealthiest countries think are important.
So. While the US is often claimed to be an outlier because so many folks here (including the President-Elect) think climate change is not a significant issue, it turns out that most folks on the planet agree with the President-Elect that climate is down at or near the bottom of the issues that matter. The existence of some fabled large constituency in favor of action on climate issues seems to be a creation of the media … dang, a fabled constituency that is actually just a creation of the media, where else have I heard that lately? But I digress …
Given that we have a limited amount of time, money, and resources with which to work on these issues, it seems to me that we should focus our effort on the real problems that people have identified as making a real difference in their lives. In order, the top ten issues worldwide are education, jobs, healthcare, good government, food, protection against violence, clean water, unemployment insurance, roads, and sexual equality. If people truly care about the poor, pick one of those issues and go to work. It’s what I did for a good chunk of my life.
Once we’ve solved those challenges, we might think about spending billions on CO2 mitigation … or not.
But until then? Not so much.
w.
As Always: Let me please request that to avoid misunderstandings, you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU OBJECT TO. This lets everyone know the exact nature of your objection.
In Addition: If you think I’m using a method wrong, or using a wrong method or dataset, please further the discussion by showing how to use the method in the right way, or by linking to the correct method or dataset. Simply saying “Willis, you’re wrong” doesn’t help me (and undoubtedly others) learn how to do it correctly.
Let’s hope that the President Elect is shown theses stats. so that it makes it easier for him to fulfil his election pledge and withdraw all expenditure related to the AGW confidence trick.
The UN survey is similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which has been fairly well debunked. Both approaches are situational. Catch a person on a cold windy day, when they missed lunch, and they will respond differently than when you catch them on the beach at Hilton Head. In the former case they will focus on basic dimensions of survival. In the latter they will focus on altruism, meaning of life, blah, blah, blah … I would guess that the different response due to gender has a s much to do with situational variation in the measurement as with reliable difference between men and women.
That’s almost exactly what occurred to me!
Nice theory now prove it.
“ the different response due to gender has a s much to do with situational variation in the measurement as with reliable difference between men and women.”
That’s easy enough to prove, …….. via a simple study of “gender responses” to being served Divorce Papers and/or the subsequent divorce litigations.
The female’s emotional decision making before, during and after “divorce litigations” is an all-consuming mental exercise.
The people taking the pole
*****************************
heh…sounds painful….
And it is very reasonable that men/women/rich/poor all had a somewhat differing response to such.
“Assume the position!”
Oh No. Are you being “Political Correct” dividing what men and women think and poor/rich nation. Watch out the PC police will put you in jail. (sarc off)
Very informative article. Even discounting for methodological concerns of such an online poll, should not this give pause to those advocating the spending of $ trillions to influence the temperature by a few tenth of a degree supposedly to help the poor of the world? Many of these other concerns should have priority, and as we all learned when managing our allowances, money spent for one thing is unavailable for other things.
The Trump administration will take a lot of flak for pulling back from Pres. Obama’s climate pledges. Would support and funds for some of these higher priority items, directly not through UN, and maybe tied to bilateral trade deals be a way forward? Maybe modeled after Pres. Bush’s support of anti AIDS work in Africa.
More proof that rich Westerners, rich enough to worry about climate change, are a global minority.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2812034
Thanks, very interesting. I was curious about age differences in the U.S. by age and was surprised by the results of my quick check. As you moved from the youngest to oldest respondents the concern for climate change increased relative to other issues.
>15 came in 11th, 16-30 came in 10th, 30-45 was 9th, 45-65 was 8th and for those over 61 it was the 6th highest issue.
I would have thought that the framed long term risks of climate change coupled with their generally more progressive orientations would have made climate a more salient issue for younger people. But perhaps other progressive issues are a bigger priority to them. On the other hand, maybe the younger people are more removed from the 70s and not as sensitive to the issue as many older people who still identify with that counter-culture.
It’s simple; The damn dirty deplorables keep messing up their “climate communication”. But no matter; the rich “liberal” elites know what’s best for everyone, and the planet.
Thanks, Willis. Your figs 2 and 3 are of exemplary quality, well labelled and captioned. Can you correct the typo in line 3 as I would like to send the link to some friends?
Done, thanks,
w.
A truly smart politician – say one who is comfortable ignoring the “prevailing wisdom” – will see instantly that he can free up a lot of money for other projects by slashing all of the funding climate projects are getting, and he will pay almost no price among the voters for doing so. Somebody is always upset when programs are cut, so if a President, say, wants to free up money and move it to some of his real priorities, this is where you get it. Obviously.
Willis ==> It would be interesting to see at least one more set of charts — what poor country women want vs rich country women, and the same for men. This chart might show why many humanitarian and charity efforts miss the mark — women/men from rich countries decide what the women/men in poor countries need.
When all the economic classes are considered combined, there is surprisingly little difference between the opinions of men and women — differences of only a few percentage points — many within the margin or error, I suspect.
From my experience in humanitarian work, women in poor countries want the things that help keep their families (read: children) safe and healthy and want reliable, dependable work for their men and for themselves — this last does not mean “better, higher paying, jobs” but rather just steady work providing a predictable paycheck without the constant threat of arbitrary termination.
Note that millions (literally) of poor rural Chinese have flocked to China’s manufacturing centers to live in rabbit-warren conditions to take advantage of just that kind of “steady-paycheck job” — one member of the family working in a distant factory, saving up to bring the rest of the family in the future.
I always enjoy posts by Willis, and this is another great yet simple analysis.
A point to note about the differences between rich and poor. Even the people from ‘poor’ countries that responded to this poll apparently had access to a computer with an internet connection. I am sure there are many more ‘poor’ people without such access who had no opportunity to make their opinions known. But I feel sure that they would have placed action on climate change as low if not lower than the 13% that Willis found.
Samuel C Cogar
November 22, 2016 at 6:25 am
“Quoting comment in reference to:
“Figure 2. Differences between men and women.””
Samuel, I’ve had to duck for cover a few times in stating that we have too many women in politics and this itself leads to evermore socialist leanings. I used to be big on women’s lib, but with time, I’ve not been happy with the priorities of those who have taken on the top political jobs. They are definitely predisposed to “nanny governments”.
I grew up with tough, very smart women in my family and, of course there were the few like Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto and a very few others who got to the top political job in those days. These days, there are no such types at the top (hmm…not so many men there either come to think of it – probably eating too much tofu). I have some hope for Theresa May, I guess, but I’d be happier if women were to exercise their energies in championing some of the top things on the UN poll list and leave political economy to men. I’d probably make an exception for Janice Moore, though, a tough, smart, classy girl who graces these pages often.
Re the poll: the reason the UN and its fellow lefty demagogues are at odds with real folk is they have been dealing with the kleptocratic heads of the poor countries who see CC as another way to get showered with cash to stuff into real estate in NYC and palaces in southern France.
One solution to this problem is to limit the vote to people who are net tax payers.
@ur momisugly Gary Pearse
I almost missed reading your post …… and glad I didn’t.
And you are absolutely right about the fact that ….. “we have too many women in politics and this itself leads to evermore socialist leanings”.
And far worse yet, Gary, ….. “we have far, far, far too many women Administrators and Teachers in Public School Education and this itself leads to the youngest of the generations being subjected to socialist brainwashing”.
And thus the reason that American students are now “sucking hind tit” on the world ranking in Math, Science and Reading.
I think a fairer poll would be to give a person fifty issues and have them rank their top ten. Climate change would then likely not show up on the radar screen at all.
That’s sort of been done, with C.C. ranking 31st or 32nd out of 32 issues. But asking to choose the top ten will certainly filter out C.C. entirely, yep.
The reason that climate change is more important to the rich is because the governments of rich countries are the ones selling the propaganda for their political agenda(climate change) as a marketing tool so they can justify sending money from their countries to the poor countries via paths like the Green Climate Fund……..supposedly to fund such things as the poor countries adapting to (human caused) climate change caused by the rich countries burning fossil fuels.
However, the last 4 decades have featured the best weather/climate in ~1,000 years with a corresponding, beneficial increase in CO2 and slight, mostly beneficial warming.
Sea levels have continued to increase close to the rate of the past century ~1″/decade. Heavy rain events have also increased a bit from the slightly warmer atmosphere/oceans which allows the atmosphere to hold more moisture.
However, violent tornadoes peaked in the 1970’s(mostly a US item), global tropical cyclone energy peaked in the mid 1990’s, global drought is down a bit and the earth is greatly greening up, along with crop yields and world food production soaring(with CO2/weather a plus).
So if the benefits have greatly outweighed the negatives from increasing CO2, in the undeveloped countries, how is it that the developed countries need to send billions to undeveloped countries to adapt?
Build bigger storage bins for larger crops (-:
There is something odd about the poll reports seen by following links Willis has provided. If you toggle between the Americas and Central America there is a minor swap of the first two most popular categories. Even the numbers don’t change much. I’m skeptical of the entire thing now.
..I fail to understand what your problem is ?
Polls don’t matter. The will of the people doesn’t matter. The government is omnipotent enough to know what’s best for the rest of us.
Rovingbroker writes: “A good education is not available to many in the US which may in part explain why Trump won.” Um… what? Are you familiar with the failed “Trump University” which bilked students of their money and pretended to provide an education? Anyone who voted for Trump in the hopes that good education would be provided has been taken for a fool…
..Umm, Trump did not control the school and most students were praising it.
Right. That’s why he hd to pay $26 million to settle the lawsuits…
More sour grapes from a poor loser…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/01/trump-university-students-speak-never-felt-pressured-offered-refunds/
Willis Eschenbach
“The artist currently known as Prince”. Left me rolling on the floor.
Eugene WR Gallun
PS — Now I have this vague hope that if Charles ever does ascend the British throne that the media will always refer to him as “the King formerly known as Prince”.
Yeah, Gene, I had to put in a plug for the Purple one …
For those wondering what the joke is, the musician Prince once got into an argument with Sony, his music label. He was unhappy and wanted to leave. They said (correctly) that they owned the rights to his name so he couldn’t record for anyone else. Weird, huh? Gotta love the music business.
Prince being Prince, he simply changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, called himself “the artist formerly known as Prince”, and kept recording. Once the Sony contract ran out, he resumed his own name.
I cannot, however, take credit for applying the sobriquet to Prince Charles. You see, he actually is an artist, and when there was a show of his watercolors here in San Francisco, the local newspaper referred to him as “the artist currently known as Prince” … and for me at least, it stuck.
Best regards,
w.
So what’s the symbol? Oh, never mind.
There is a big difference between asking someone what is important to them and asking them what needs action taken. In terms of what is important, Protection from crime and violence has to be number one for just about everyone, because if people were being murdered all around you then jobs and healthcare and education would take a back seat to trying to stop the murdering. As with access to clean water, if don’t have it then getting it is more important to anything else on that list.
I see a lot of insincerity in claims that we must act on climate change for the sake of future generations. I saw one estimate (exaggerated no doubt) That the cost of climate change will be 1.9 Trillion dollars a year by the year 2100. Why would people say we need to take action on stopping a possible future cost like that when they aren’t asking for action on the trillions of debt we are already passing onto future generations that is REAL and not some estimate for 80 years from now? Why is our current national debt not getting 1 /10th the attention as something we need to fix for future generations but a POTENTIAL cost of similar magnitude decades from now requires we do something about it right now? And thats all the threat of global warming is, is cost. No one is going to die from a sea level rising fractions of an inch faster per year than it is right not, it is just going to cost money to deal with it. So if passing on costs to future generations is a problem why aren’t these warmists demanding action on the national debt? Because we’ll start by cutting that climate change grant budget, thats why.
Funny thing, when given a choice between acting on issues that are real, and a fake although much-hyped one, most people choose real issues. Go figure.
from the article: 2. “The point that the president is making is that when you are talking about the direct daily impact of these kinds of challenges on the daily lives of Americans, particularly Americans living in this country, that the direct impact, that more people are affected by those things than by terrorism.”
The flaw in this argument is there is no daily impact on people’s lives from the climate behaving abnormally. If you asked most normal people about the impact of climate change on their lives, they would say “what impact”? What are you talking about?
Obama’s spokesperson is assuming too much in saying human-caused climate change is affecting people’s lives for the worse. There is no change in the climate caused by humans. If you say there is, then show it to us.
OTOH if you asked them to name an impact of terrorism on their lives? “Hell, that’s easy. Airport security.”
It’s interesting that this UNDP poll is still “open”. When it was originally launched (early 2013), it was supposed to run for two years:
Mind you, the PR fanfare surrounding the launch of this survey also declared that:
See: NEWSFLASH! Action on climate change voted bottom of world’s priority heap
And we know just how well that has worked out, don’t we?!
The other interesting thing about this particular poll is that contrary to an implied promise to share the results with the designated High Level Panel honchos, they didn’t. Instead, the UN powers that be decided that the results of a 24 hour 10,000 participant shindig would be more to their liking. See:
UN survey participants: one-day 10,000 trumps two-year 8 million plus
But as I had discovered in March of 2015 – while exploring the voices, visions and values of the UN – via the magic of media manipulation, the UN had already succeeded in linking (and elevating) “Action taken on climate change” to three “Proposed Sustainable Development Goals”:
Promote sustainable industrialization
Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns
Promote actions at all levels to address climate change
So perhaps the one-day 10,000 party was to come to the aid of a flailing and failing UN agenda that nobody wants or needs?!
Sorry, first link s/b: NEWSFLASH! Action on climate change voted bottom of world’s priority heap
And link to March 2015 post is:
Of United Nations’ voices, visions and values
Goldrider…. “somebody needs to bring this (priority ranking ) to the attention of Mr. Trump ” .
With respect Goldrider , Trump knew what the publics priorities were and the Democrats demonstrated once again they didn’t .
The Democrats catered to there hedge fund greenie backers and Trump listened to the people fed up with
the insular and ineffective Washington establishment .
The Democrats counted on their historic base for blind undying loyalty but for decades screwed those people as they sold out to lobbyists. bankers and hedge fund billionaires .
Trump will “Make America Great Again ” and next time obliterate the same Democrats (Ok except California ) who are nothing more than a name to rent . How they kept any union support while openly declaring they were firing union workers is mind blowing .
The blast of fresh air coming to the USA is long overdue .
Democrats are also the party who started the ”cannabis is harmful” commodities scam to promote nylon and other oil based products by Mr DuPont, Amber.
Think of the untold number of blacks and hispanics turned into criminals by Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratically controlled, Senate AND House, when they made that law.