The right statistic is often worth a thousand words—and sometimes much more than that. These five weekly data points, put together by Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the risk consultancy Eurasia Group, provide a glimpse into global trends, political dangers and international power dynamics. Some are counterintuitive facts. Others are small stats that tell a big story. This week, Bremmer looks at figures from violence in the Central African Republic to global perceptions of climate change—and what they mean for everybody else.
Republicans vs. Pakistan on climate change
Americans are less concerned with climate change than the citizens of any other high-income country, with just 40 percent saying it’s a major threat. That falls short of Britain (48 percent), Canada and France (54 percent), Germany (56 percent), Spain and Italy (64 percent) and Japan (72 percent). This low ranking appears to stem from the Republican camp. Just one in four self-identified Republicans deemed global climate change a major threat; within that group, 10 percent of those aligned with the Tea Party did. Those figures are more comparable to polling in Egypt (16 percent) or Pakistan (15 percent). Meanwhile, 65 percent of Democrats think global climate change is a major threat.
(New York Times Upshot, Pew Research)
Can China learn from the U.S. shale boom?
The United States has fully embraced fracking, raising shale gas’s share of overall American natural gas production from 8 percent in 2007 to 35 percent in 2012. And China is reaping the benefits Not only will increased production bring down the price of China’s gas imports, but the rising superpower is also taking notes on how to create a shale boom of its own. While its current production is anemic—at roughly 200 million cubic meters compared to the United States’ 290 billion cubic meters—Beijing has set goals to ramp up production to 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015, and as much as 100 billion cubic meters by 2020. An increase of that magnitude would cut China’s gas imports by up to 40 percent.
Twenty years of mixed progress in South Africa
As South Africa celebrates the 20th anniversary of the historic democratic election that brought Nelson Mandela into power, indicators of social and economic progress since 1994 are anything but clear-cut. Today, only 43 percent of the working-age population has jobs, because the economy has been growing too slowly to accommodate a rapidly expanding population. Only one-third of the youngest voting bloc, the 18 and 19-year-olds who were born after the end of apartheid, have registered to vote. And South Africa ranks 146th out of 148 countries in terms of educational standards. But a black middle class has taken root, and racial economic disparities have narrowed. In 1994, for every black engineering student, there were 44 white ones—now the ratio is 1:1. Today, over half of the black population has a bank account (compared with less than a fifth back then). And roughly two out of five senior managers are black, compared with just two out of 50 in 1994.
(The Economist, the World Economic Forum)
A dire situation in the Central African Republic
The violence between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic has devolved into full-fledged ethnic cleansing. The United Nations estimates that 2.2 million people are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, and is asking donor countries to finance a $274 million emergency aid package. More than 600,000 people have fled their homes—a refugee burden that will be primarily shouldered by neighboring countries too poor to take them on. By the end of this year, 360,000 refugees will have been absorbed by close neighbors.
Still waiting on a more democratic world
Think there’s an inevitable advance underway toward universal democracy? Think again. According to Freedom House, a U.S.-based NGO, 2013 was the eighth year in a row when more countries experienced declines in political rights or civil liberties than improvements. Despite that near-decade-long trend, Freedom House’s tally of electoral democracies over the same period has remained virtually unchanged, hovering at just over 60 percent of all countries.