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Concept
Public opinion on climate change
Summary
Public opinion on climate change is the aggregate of attitudes or beliefs held by a population concerning issues relating to "anthropogenic climate change, perceptions of climate change risks, concern about its seriousness, and thoughts on what, if anything, should be done to address it." Public opinion on climate change is related to a broad set of variables, including the effects of sociodemographic, political, cultural, economic, and environmental factors" as well as media coverage and interaction with different news and social media.
International public opinion on climate change shows a majority viewing the crisis as an emergency. In January 2021, the United Nations Development Programme reported results of The Peoples' Climate Vote. This was the largest-ever climate survey, with responses from 1.2 million people in 50 countries, which indicated that 64% of respondents considered climate change to be an emergency, with forest and land conservation being the most popular solutions. According to the report's authors, the results present "a clear and convincing call for decision-makers to step up their ambition".
According to a 2015 journal article based on a literature review of thousands of articles related to over two hundred studies covering the period from 1980 to 2014, there was an increase in public awareness of climate change in the 1980s and early 1990s, followed by a period of growing concern— mixed with the rise of conflicting positions—in the later 1990s and early 2000s. This was followed by a period of "declining public concern and increasing skepticism" in some countries in the mid-2000s to late-2000s. From 2010 to 2014, there was a period suggesting "possible stabilization of public concern about climate change".
Matthew C. Nisbet and Teresa Myers' 2007 article—"Twenty Years of Public Opinion about Global Warming"—covered two decades in the United States starting in 1980—in which they investigated public awareness of the causes and impacts of global warming, public policy, scientific consensus on climate change, public support for the Kyoto Accord, and their concerns about the economic costs of potential public policies that responded to climate change.
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