Belief in climate change on the rise in US

It’s only taken drought and Hurricane Sandy to wake up a few people, but progress is progress. Whether this means people are coming to the realization that Faux News has been telling lies, or that Big Oil is actively engaged in distorting the truth, is hard to say.It’s going to take some big changes to correct the mistakes of recent decades.  But America is big on real reform, even when it starts to focus on a “problem.”

Look at the budget talks.  Even though it was radical tax cuts and two wars (once based on a lie) that are the primary causes of the deficit, we’re talking about cutting other “innocent” programs in order to pay for the mistakes of the bad ones.
Even when the public mood swings the right direction, it’s hard to see people insisting on actual reform that does any good.  Just look at guns.  How many children have to die, how many more mass shootings do we need, before any real reform is done in that area?
There are just too many other problems to address, that aren’t being addressed, though this may eventually supersede them all.  At least on the bright side, people are increasingly worried.  And that’s something.
More on the AP-GfK poll:

The poll found 4 out of every 5 Americans said climate change will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it. That’s up from 73 percent when the same question was asked in 2009.
And 57 percent of Americans say the U.S. government should do a great deal or quite a bit about the problem. That’s up from 52 percent in 2009. Only 22 percent of those surveyed think little or nothing should be done, a figure that dropped from 25 percent.
Overall, 78 percent of those surveyed said they believe temperatures are rising, up from 75 percent three years earlier. In general, U.S. belief in global warming, according to AP-GfK and other polls, has fluctuated over the years but has stayed between about 70 and 85 percent.

While this trend is no doubt positive, it’s also crazy to think that it’s taken so long to come around. Most of the industrialized world has been of this thinking for years and has grown frustrated with the lack of attention or seriousness by the US.
Much like our crazy gun laws and gun violence, the rest of the world just scratches its head and wonders what the heck is wrong with the US on some issues. It would be nice if Americans dropped their infatuation with Faux News and the bible and moved back to the truth. We used to be thought leaders, and it’s time we get back there again.