{"id":46196,"date":"2019-09-17T08:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T07:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=46196"},"modified":"2019-09-17T08:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T07:22:40","slug":"what-you-think-you-know-about-the-climate-is-probably-wrong-new-uk-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/09\/17\/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-climate-is-probably-wrong-new-uk-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"What you think you know about the climate is probably wrong \u00e2\u20ac\u201c new UK poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought this post from The Conversation<\/a> by,\u00a0Bobby Duffy,\u00a0<\/span>Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute, King's College London was worth sharing:<\/em><\/p>\n

We humans have a natural tendency to focus on\u00a0negative stories<\/a>. We tend to assume things are worse than they really are, and going downhill fast. We forget\u00a0how bad things were in the past<\/a>\u00a0and how far we\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n

In reality, the world is often better \u2013 and getting better \u2013 than we think, something I wrote about in my book,\u00a0The Perils of Perception: Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything<\/a>. Murder rates, deaths from terrorism and extreme poverty are all down. Life expectancy, health and education levels are up. And yet, there is one vital, urgent exception to this rule: we still don\u2019t realise how badly wrong our global climate and environment have gone.<\/p>\n

A new survey of Britons<\/a>\u00a0which tested understanding of some key facts about the environment reveals the extent of environmental misperceptions. Rather than asking people what they thought might happen, this study instead focused on assessing knowledge of the world as it is right now.<\/p>\n

One question, for example, was how many of the past 22 years have been the hottest on record?<\/p>\n

The answer is 20, but the average guess was just 12. And one in five people guessed five or fewer.<\/p>\n

Britons also overestimated some facts, such as how much air travel contributes to greenhouse guesses. The average guess was that 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel, when in fact it\u00a0only accounts for around 2%<\/a>. Respondents also assumed that air travel\u2019s emissions are about equal to that of all other forms of transport put together, when in reality, the latter contributes about\u00a0ten times as much as flights<\/a>. This is due to the relative rarity of flights compared to other forms of transport.<\/p>\n

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Misperceptions about the source of greenhouse gas emissions.<\/span>\u00a0The Policy Institute, King's College London<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet despite aviation\u2019s relatively limited contribution to emissions overall, one of the most effective environmental actions we can take as individuals is to fly less. A\u00a0study by Swedish academics<\/a>\u00a0puts skipping one transatlantic flight as the third most effective action we can take, only behind the much more extreme options of having one fewer child and living entirely car free. Curiously, only 25% of the British public pick out skipping a flight as one of the top three. Instead, 52% of people guessed that recycling was one of the best things we can do to reduce our emissions - when it\u2019s seventh in this list of nine actions.<\/p>\n

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We are very wrong on what would most reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.<\/span>\u00a0The Policy Institute, King's College London<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that\u2019s not our only misperception about recycling: we massively underestimate the problem of plastic waste. Britons guessed that about half of the 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste humans have produced globally is\u00a0still out there in the environment<\/a>\u00a0(in our\u00a0oceans<\/a>, our\u00a0soil<\/a>, our\u00a0water<\/a>, even inside our\u00a0bodies<\/a>), when in reality\u00a0it\u2019s an incredible 79%<\/a>. And how much plastic waste has been recycled? Respondents guessed about a quarter, when in reality its only 9% (Read:\u00a0Is there any point in recycling?<\/a>).<\/p>\n

We also don\u2019t realise just how extreme the loss of animal species over the past decade has been. Only a third correctly identify that the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles in the world have\u00a0declined by 60% since 1970<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Only a third of us correctly guess that animal populations have dropped by 60% since 1970.<\/span>\u00a0The Policy Institute, King's College London<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anxiety and other people<\/h2>\n

But our lack of understanding of the scale of the issues doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re not worried. In fact, recent polling of Britons by Ipsos MORI measured\u00a0record-breaking levels of concern<\/a>. Our new polling also shows that two-thirds of Britons reject Donald Trump\u2019s assertion that global warming is an\u00a0\u201cexpensive hoax\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and instead two-thirds agree with the recent\u00a0UK Parliament declaration<\/a>\u00a0that we are facing a \u201cclimate change emergency, with the threat of irreversible destruction of our environment in our lifetime\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Donald J. Trump<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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✔<\/b><\/span><\/span>@realDonaldTrump<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!<\/p>\n

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818<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
Twitter Ads info and privacy<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Very few agree that global warming is an expensive hoax \u2026<\/span>\u00a0The Policy Institute, King's College London<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our largest misconceptions seem to be around what other people think, a phenomenon that academics call our\u00a0pluralistic ignorance<\/a>: our perception is that other people\u2019s attitudes are the problem.<\/p>\n

Despite record levels of public concern, 73% believe that other people are not worried enough \u2013 while only 16% say we ourselves are not worried enough. Half of us say that other people think it\u2019s too late to do anything to prevent a climate change emergency, but only one in five of us admits to having given up hope. This misunderstanding of the norm is serious, as it affects our own sense of efficacy: if others aren\u2019t bothered, what\u2019s the point in us acting?<\/p>\n

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\u2018Other people\u2019 are not worried enough about climate change.<\/span>\u00a0The Policy Institute, King's College London<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Its naive to think that bombarding people with facts will incite them to act, no matter how extraordinary or terrifying these facts may be. But its equally as naive to think that we can figure out exactly the right emotional buttons to push: we just don\u2019t know enough yet about\u00a0how fear, hope and a sense of efficacy<\/a>\u00a0interact in motivating action in different people.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, a little more understanding of the scale of the issues and how we individually can act most effectively couldn\u2019t hurt. And perhaps most crucially, we need to remember that we are not alone in our concern. Anxiety about climate change has become the norm, and this is a fact that we can harness and put to use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought this post from The Conversation by,\u00a0Bobby Duffy,\u00a0Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute, King’s College London was worth sharing: We
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-new-deal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}