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The European Union recently released results of a survey on Europeans' attitudes towards climate change. The surveys were conducted in the first two months of 2009. There were responses from 26,718 citizens in 30 different countries.
Respondents were asked to select the three most serious problems facing the world from a list that included poverty and lack of food and water, the economic downturn, climate change, terrorism, war, nuclear proliferation, disease, and world population.
The
top three were: (1) Poverty and lack of food and water; (2) a major global
economic downturn; and (3) climate change. The number of people who picked the
global economy as their number one concern doubled from a similar survey taken
on the spring of 2008. Given the near global panic that was prevalent in
January and February 2009 these results aren't all that surprising.
What struck me was that the two other problems identified as the most serious are in my view opposite sides of the same coin. The impact of climate change will be felt hardest by the people living in the developing and undeveloped nations of the world. And two of the most important affects of climate change will be food and water shortages. So in that sense, you have just an overwhelming majority of Europeans selecting the direct or indirect effects of climate change as their number one concern.
The respondents choosing climate change as their top concern tended to be younger with more years of schooling and perhaps most significantly, felt that they are informed about the issue of climate change. In other words, the more they knew, the more likely they were to view climate change as a serious problem.
The deniers (which the survey identifies as conservative males aged 55 and over) will point to this as evidence that the world is indeed in a state of climate change hysteria. The believers (liberal males and females aged 15 to 54) will say this merely points out the value of educating the public on the scientific evidence supporting the reality of climate change.
The real question is whether concern translates into action. Two-thirds of the respondents say that they have indeed done something about the problem in their personal lives. And 60 percent of the respondents feel that fighting climate change is good for business.
Contrast that with survey results from the United States. A recent Bloomberg poll found that almost two- thirds of U.S. investors feel that climate change is not a serious threat. A Gallup poll found that a record-high 41 percent of Americans surveyed feel that the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated. Those numbers won't light much of a fire under the Congress as it considers future climate change legislation.
This article first appeared in PlanetRestart.org
