GlobeScan’s tracking survey reveals that public concern about climate change has been volatile since the 2009 Copenhagen summit’s failure to agree to a global deal to reduce carbon emissions—but concern continues to be higher in developing than in developed countries.
This reflects our 2010 Greendex survey of 17 countries, where British, Swedish, German, and American respondents showed the lowest levels of agreement with the proposition “global warming will worsen my way of life within my own lifetime,” while Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese respondents showed high levels of agreement. This may reflect the greater potential for catastrophic events such as natural disasters to impact people’s lives in developing nations.
This decline in concern about climate change may result from increasing feelings of urgency about other social and economic issues overshadowing long-term concerns about the environment. In 2011, corruption, extreme poverty, the rising cost of food and energy, and terrorism emerge as greater preoccupations on a global level than climate change.
Particular factors that are likely to be behind the decline in the perceived seriousness of climate change in developed countries between 2000 and 2003—and again in 2010—are the impact of the September 11 attacks, the subsequent conflicts in the Middle East, and the global economic downturn. The widely publicized “Climategate” controversy is also likely to have been a factor.
France, Japan, and the USA have seen continuing decreases in the perceived seriousness of climate change over the past three years. Under the influence of the ongoing economic slowdown—and of the Fukushima disaster—climate change has lost attention in some major economies, and is slow to regain it.
Over the past year, however, climate change has recovered its position as an issue of serious concern in some developed and developing countries, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Turkey, and Russia.
Finding from the GlobeScan Radar, Wave 2, 2011
This post was written by former GlobeScan Research Director, Sam Mountford.
