Coordinated surveys, conducted by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 33 countries from 1993 through 2010, “are the first and only surveys that put long-term attitudes toward environmental issues in general and global climate change in particular in an international perspective,” said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey, a project of the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, and author of a paper that summarizes the surveys.
In the surveys, respondents were asked the relative importance of eight issues: health care, education, crime, the environment, immigration, the economy, terrorism and poverty.
The economy ranked highest in concern in 15 countries, followed by health care in eight, education in six, poverty in two, and terrorism and crime in one country each. Immigration and the environment did not make the top of the list in any country over the 17-year period. In the United States, concern for the environment ranked sixth while the economy was No. 1.
In terms of national averages, the order of concern was the economy (25 percent); health care (22.2) education (15.6); poverty (11.6); crime (8.6) environment (4.7), immigration (4.1) and terrorism (2.6), the surveys showed. Terrorism’s low ranking was notable in light of the widespread attention the issue has received since 2001, though it topped the list of concerns in Turkey...
A polar bear near Svalbard, shot by Paul W.J. de Groot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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