Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns or average temperatures – there are many different factors that contribute towards climate change, from energy usage to transport, businesses, agriculture, waste and forestry. Greenhouse gasses and other harmful emissions are always going to be floating around in our atmosphere, but are our current levels sustainable, and are they being reduced to combat climate change?

What is the public view of climate change?

According to statistics taken from Gov.uk, 73% of people are at least fairly convinced that climate change is a real problem, whereas only 26% are not very or at all convinced about climate change. The data below, from the Office for National Statistics’ Opinions Survey, details the levels of belief, taken from a survey of people, split up into gender, age group, education level, socio-economic category, annual gross income, number of cars in the household, license holder and region.

Levels of belief in climate change

Whilst almost 3 quarters of people are convinced that climate change is a real problem in the world today, not as many people are concerned about its effects on our world, and the short and long term impact it may have. The sheet below details the level of concern for climate change, split by the same categories.

This shows that only 65% of people are at least fairly concerned about the impact of climate change, and 34% of people either have no concern or do not believe climate change is happening. 8% of people who are believers that climate change is happening are not concerned about it’s effects.

Levels of concern for climate change

When it comes to contributors to climate change, the statistics show a very one sided opinion over what the cause and solution to climate change is. According to statistics taken every year since 2006 – 2011, people believed the main contributors to climate change to be emissions, whether that be from road transport, planes, power stations or other sources, the burning of fossil fuels for energy and the deforestation of forests.

Perceived contributors to global warming

The public’s willingness to change their behaviour to help to combat climate change is slowly declining over the years, despite increased concern over the effects of it.

In 2006, 77% of people agreed that they would be prepared to change their behaviour in order to limit climate change, 17% said they neither agreed or disagreed/didn’t know and only 6% claimed that they disagreed or didn’t believe they could influence climate change.

This has slowly changed over the years, and in 2011 only 65% of people agreed that they would be prepared to change their behaviour to limit climate change, 21% of people said that they neither agreed or disagreed/didn’t know and, after growing 8%, 14% of people disagree that they would be prepared to change their behaviour or believed that they could influence climate change.

This shift in uncertainty or disbelief in an individual ability to influence climate change can be put down to many different factors, some of which include an increase in population, leading to a “What can I alone do?” attitude, or a growing dependency on fuel, and energy in everyday life, resulting in people being more reluctant or distrusting in their ability to combat it.

Willingness to change behaviour

What are the facts?

When broken down, it is carbon dioxide that is the main offender in contributing to climate change, accounting for around 82% of the UK’s gas emissions in 2012.

82% Carbon Dioxide

9% Methane

6% Nitrous Oxide

3% Other

The table below shows the greenhouse gas emissions by gas, in 2012 including Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Fluorinated gases.

When breaking down greenhouse gas emissions by sector, in 2012, we find that the main producer of greenhouse gas emissions were from the energy sector:

35% Energy Sector

21% Transport

15% Business

13% Residential

10% agriculture

7% the remaining sectors; waste management, industrial process, public sector

In brief, what does this show us?

These figures show a frightening trend of growing awareness, shrinking concern and a lesser willingness to change to combat climate change. Our growing energy need, transport systems and increasingly high demand for food product are polluting the atmosphere.

Want to know how you can combat climate change? View our post on what your business can do here!