Monday 18 April 2011

Europeans are not worried about climate change

Excellent news from Europe:
Only a quarter of Britons think that climate change is one of the most important environmental issues, according to a fresh MORI survey involving 18,000 people across the world. The results in other European countries were similar, according to the Ecologist magazine, which - not surprisingly - is very worried.

The comments from leading warmists are hardly surprising:

Direct contact with climatic events increases people’s awareness of climate change and makes them more likely to change their own habits, according to previous research by the Tyndall Centre. Professor Le Quere believes this phenomenon, combined with last year’s notoriously cold British winter, may explain why people in the UK are less concerned about climate change.

‘People tend to associate these events on a very short term and this can be a problem for climate policy. The actions that happen today will have impacts in 20 or 30 years and not just regionally, but worldwide.’

Some suggest a need to increase awareness of the links between everyday issues and climate change, which will in turn create more tangible reasons for people to change their habits. The Green Alliance say the survey highlights the need to make a connection between climate change and 'more concrete things that people care about' and that the Government's policy of 'nudging', favoured by David Cameron, was doomed to failure.

Dr Simon Buckell, from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change agrees. ‘People won’t sign up to expensive and systemic changes unless they are convinced by the evidence,' he says. 'They should be convinced there is a problem we need to do something about and that we have the correct policies to mitigate or adapt to these challenges. Science needs to show how current climate change affects economies and what that can mean going forward. Until people understand if there is, or isn’t a problem, people will be reticent to make a financial commitment.’


MORI researchers urged environmental campaigners to use public concern about energy security to their benefit, suggesting it could provide a 'hook by which campaigners can nudge the public towards many, if not all, pro-environmental behaviours'. WWF agreed saying it was now prioritising the push towards domestic renewable energy - particularly important given that fossil fuels account for around 85 per cent of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions and two-thirds of global emissions.

Read the entire article here

PS
What is surprising, is that MORI researches have adviced "environmental campaigners" in the way mentioned above. Isn´t the research organization supposed to concentrate on doing the research - not acting as adviser to climate change propagandists! This does definitively not increase the credibility of MORI´s research.

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