Tom Scott-Redford

The European Union has released a fascinating report into the publics’ views on climate change and global warming this week. The Eurobarometer poll, conducted earlier this year, shows that 75% of respondents rate climate change as a very serious problem. This if good, but I’d have hoped for more. Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Malta show the highest rates of recognition of the severity of climate change. Unfortunately, the UK, the Netherlands and Estonia lead the other end of the table.

A rather unsurprising finding was that people who see climate change as being very serious, tend to be well educated, in white-collar jobs, and feel well informed about the issue. In other words, we’ve got the message through to the middle classes.

People in the Nordic states and the Netherlands also feel best informed, while people in the mainly poorer Bulgaria, Romania, Portugal, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Turkey feel much less well informed. Clearly, the focus on communicating the impacts of climate change, and the actions which can be taken to curb it, should be focussed on the Central and Eastern European Countries, and on all segments of society, not just the middle classes.

It would also seem that the growing consensus in the green world against some forms of bio-fuels hasn’t filtered through to the public, with 70% in favour of alternative fuels, including bio-fuels, as part of a solution to climate change. Interestingly, and positively, 56% thought that fighting climate change could have positive impacts on the European economy, though to match that good news is a bit of bad news. 22% of respondents thought that international CO2 emissions reduction targets of 30% were too ambitious, with the Dutch and Luxembourgers leading the way in this view, and the Austrians seeing the targets as too modest (33% of Austrian respondents see targets as too modest).

As for personal actions to tackle climate change, the most interesting area was how much more people would be prepared to pay for energy from low-emission sources. The Danish and Greek lead the way in being prepared to pay more, while Bulgaria and Portugal languish at the bottom, with more respondents not being willing to pay more.