Environmental Doomsday Clock Shows Growing Concerns: Asahi Glass Foundation 2007 Survey

According to the results of an annual survey of opinions from around the world about environmental issues and threats to humanity, conducted by the Asahi Glass Foundation and released on September 5, 2007, the hands of its environmental doomsday clock were advanced 14 minutes from the previous year to 9:31. The clock shows the survey respondents' sense of the growing crisis threatening human survival, caused by the worsening of environmental conditions. Respondents moved the hands past 9:30 for the first time since the foundation started its annual survey in 1992.

The clock's hands equate the respondents' concern to the time of day (from 0:01 to 12:00), and the interval between 9:01 and 12:00 is regarded as "extremely concerned with doom." In this year's survey, about 70% of respondents identified global warming as their biggest concern when setting the time on the clock.

As the long-term solution to global warming, 90% of respondents said that a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to less than half the current level was needed. Regarding an international post-2012 framework, half the respondents chose a system that would add the United States and Australia as countries subject to regulation, and then major developing countries would join in.

http://www.af-info.or.jp/en/questionnaire/clock.html
http://www.af-info.or.jp/eng/questionnaire/enquete2007e/release2007.pdf
- Survey Shows Environmental Doomsday Recedes Slightly (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/db/830-e

Posted: 2008/01/24 07:19:41 PM
Japanese version