PUBLIC VIEWS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

 Further to my previous post (2nd February) I decided to follow it up by looking at some more detailed survey results from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) here in the UK. Remember the question was "How worried or unworried are you about the impacts of climate change?"

Results by age group:

                          all ages   16 to 29        30 to 49       50 to 69      70+

very worried               28%           33%            30%           23%        25%

somewhat worried      46              34               46              51           52

neither worried or not 17              22               13              18           16

somewhat unworried    3                1                 4                2             3

not at all worried           6               10                7                5             4 

First of all it shows that the "very worried" group is at most 33% down to 23%. This clearly shows that a large majority of the population at all ages are not very worried.

 "Somewhat worried" is the answer from the majority, which is not surprising given the vast amount of doom-laden climate items regularly on the news. Even the vast majority of the youngest age group who have grown up with this have not selected "very worried". 

This must be a great concern to the government who will have to impose some very unpopular restrictions and cost increases on us if they are to reach net zero by 2050. As time goes by and the climate continues to have much the same variety of weather as always, it will get harder and harder to sell the idea of a climate "emergency". This will be particularly so if the CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise despite the restrictions imposed here. 

Here is a link to the survey data: Worries about climate change, Great Britain - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)