While a rapidly rising number of people across the globe are worried about the climate crisis—prompting warnings from scientists, demands for robust action, and sweeping legislative proposals such as the Green New Deal—there are also mounting concerns about the United States in the era of President Donald Trump, according to new polling from the Pew Research Center.
The survey results, released Monday, show that while U.S. power and influence still isn’t the primary worry among people beyond the United States, concern about it has skyrocketed since Trump took office. As Pew’s report (pdf) noted, “In 2013, only a quarter across 22 nations saw American power as a major threat to their country, but that jumped substantially to 38 percent in 2017, the year after Trump was elected president, and to 45 percent in 2018.”
The report also pointed out “a strong connection” between seeing the U.S. as a threat and lacking confidence in Trump, particularly “among America’s traditional allies, such as Canada, the U.K., and Australia, where overall views of the U.S. and its president have plummeted in recent years.” A majority of those polled from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Tunisia, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia as well as nearly half from Canada, France, Germany, and Greece expressed concern over U.S. power in 2018.
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As the global community frets about the United States flexing its geopolitical muscles under Trump—from ditching the Paris climate agreement and global treaties to backing an effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government—Pew also found that both Americans and people around the world perceive the human-caused climate crisis as a top security risk. In half of the 26 nations where the survey was conducted from May to August of 2018, the greatest number of respondents selected climate change as posing a major threat.
“Since 2013, worries about the climate threat have increased significantly in 13 of the countries where data are available,” according to Pew. “In 2013, well before the Paris climate agreement was signed, a median of 56 percent across 23 countries surveyed said global climate change was a major threat to their country. That climbed to 63 percent in 2017, and in 2018 it stands at 67 percent.”
In the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Kenya, and South Africa, the number of people concerned about the climate crisis has soared, rising by double-digits over just five years. Across Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa—which are increasingly at risk for extreme weather exacerbated by rising temperatures—climate change has continuously ranked as a top concern.