If the forthcoming United Nations meeting in Copenhagen truly is a precious chance to save the planet from rising seas and advancing deserts, then one might expect voters all over the world to be egging on their leaders to make bold decisions.

That is the impression created by a wave of eye-catching demonstrations—such as the globally co-ordinated protest on October 24th that called, ambitiously, for carbon concentration in the atmosphere to be kept at 350 parts per million (see above). But awkwardly, there are clear signs in several democracies of sentiment moving in the other direction.

Perhaps the most astonishing evidence of a rise in climate-change scepticism was revealed by a poll published last month by the Pew Research Centre, based in Washington, DC. In the United States the share of citizens who thought there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures had plunged to 57 per cent from 71 per cent in April 2008. The share blaming rising temperatures on human activities had fallen over that time from 47 per cent to 36 per cent.

An uptick in scepticism was evident across a wide spectrum, but it was extra-sharp among Republicans, including those near the political centre. A majority of all Republicans (57 per cent) saw no hard evidence of global warming, and among moderate and liberal Republicans, believers in the phenomenon had tumbled, as a share, from 69 per cent to 41 per cent. Only two groups have been getting more worried about the global climate: liberal Democrats, and voters aged under 30.

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