US and European Public Views on Climate Change
November 17th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
A story in today’s FT shows some interesting differences across Europe and between individual European countries and the US, but overall the picture looks to be one of remarkable similarity rather than surprising differences. Here is a figure from the article:
November 18th, 2008 at 1:38 am
This is a measure of propaganda success and how the survey questions are phrased and framed. Other recent UK surveys:
October: A PoliticsHome Phi5000 poll commissioned by the TaxPayers’ Alliance panel found: An overwhelming 74% of the public now believe that “Politicians are not serious about the environment and are using the issue as an excuse to raise more revenue from green taxes”, up from 63% in August 2007. The number of people with faith that politicians are using green taxes for the right reasons has fallen from 20% to 14%.
September: The Guardian: ‘British Public unwilling to pay for climate change bill’
“However more than seven out of 10 of the nearly 2,000 people questioned said they were unwilling to pay higher taxes to combat environmental issues, and a similar number believed the green agenda had been “hijacked” to increase taxes.”
November 18th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Yes…a more interesting question would be: Taking into account the recent global financial market crisis, how important is it for YOU to take action to combat global warming, by giving up (for starters) about 5-10% of your take home pay for the rest of your life?
Now that would be a lot more relevant, don’t you think?