Poll Ranks Climate Change and ISIS as World’s Greatest Threats

Climate change and the Islamic State are essentially tied as the world’s foremost global security concerns, according to a new poll of 38 countries.

The poll, released Tuesday from the Pew Research Center, shows that the public in 13 countries, mostly in Latin America and Africa, rank climate change as the top global security threat, while 18 countries ranked ISIS as the biggest concern.

In the U.S., the public ranked cybersecurity and Islamic terrorism as the most serious threats, with climate change coming in third on the list.

Jacob Poushter, Pew’s senior researcher and co-author of the study, told the New York Times that climate change remains a highly political issue in the U.S.

“The stark partisan divide between those on the left and the right means there is a large portion in the United States that doesn’t see climate change as a threat,” Poushter said.

As reported by Newsweek:

“Torsten Schneider-Haase, head of political research at Kantar Emnid, said environmentalism was not a partisan issue in Germany, according to The Local.

‘Environment and climate protection have already greatly mattered to people in Germany for years,’ Schneider-Haase said. ‘The fight against climate change has been understood as a cross-party effort, and not only associated with the Green party.’

The gap between Germans and Americans on the issue may help explain the ongoing clash between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over climate policy. Trump announced in June that he was pulling America out of the Paris climate agreement, a decision Merkel has said that she ‘deplores.'”

For a deeper dive:

New York Times, CNN, Newsweek

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