Brazil and Cameroon ahead of U.S. on climate change

If President Obama wants people in this country to get all riled up about being competitive in the world, maybe we should be working on catching up with countries that understand the threat of human-caused climate change. Like perhaps, Brazil:

[RIO DE JANEIRO] Almost 80 per cent of Brazilians think global warming is caused by human activities, a survey has found, compared with less than half of Americans and around 70 per cent of Britons according to similar recent surveys.

Around 90 per cent of Brazilians believe that global warming is happening and think it is a serious issue, putting them on a par with Europeans and well ahead of Americans.

The results challenge the belief that in the developing world there is a lack of knowledge of the importance of climate change, said Yurij Castelfranchi, an expert on public perception of science based at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Or Cameroon:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AlertNet) – Faced with rising temperatures and advancing desert in the north and disastrous flooding in the south, Cameroon’s government will this year create a National Observatory on Climate Change, aimed at monitoring the effects of climate change on the country’s people, agriculture and ecosystems, and guiding work on climate action.

The new body, to be made up primarily of environmental and climate change experts and civil society representatives, including grassroots groups, will aim to provide “unprecedented data and information for more improved climate change mitigation and adaptation action,” said Pierre Hele, the country’s minister of environment and nature protection, in a speech earlier this month.

The observatory, which has been in planning since 2009, will also “counsel and sensitise the population” of Cameroon on climate change issues, he said, at a time when concern about climate change issues is surging across the country.

We could use such an institution. It's hard to be competitive, no matter how rich you are, from an intellectual backwater.