According to a large global survey conducted by Facebook, Europeans hear about global warming at least once a week, more often than in other parts of the world, especially in Middle Eastern countries. — AFP Relaxnews
According to a large global survey conducted by Facebook, Europeans hear about global warming at least once a week, more often than people in other parts of the world, especially in Middle Eastern countries.
Carried out in partnership with Yale University in the US, this global survey about public views on climate change was conducted in 192 countries and compiled responses from 108,946 active Facebook users age 18 and over. Users were asked questions about their beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors relating to climate change.
Overall, the research shows strong disparities between continents, but also between countries. For example, respondents in Finland (92%), Hungary (90%), Germany (84%) and Croatia (83%) claim to know “a lot” about the climate crisis.
On the other hand, the study shows significant percentages of people who say they have “never heard of” climate change. This is notably the case in Benin (34%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Haiti (32% each).
The study also looked at how often participants are likely to hear about climate change in their daily lives. And here again, there are marked differences between countries. More than half (66%) of respondents in Germany and Sweden, for example, believe they hear about climate change “at least once a week”. This drops to 9% in Algeria and Cambodia, and 7% in Yemen.
People living in Mexico are among those that say they are the most concerned about the climate crisis: 83% believe in particular that climate change will harm future generations “a lot” and that it constitutes “a very serious threat” for the inhabitants of their country over the next 20 years.
While there seems to be a consensus on the existence of the climate crisis in all the countries studied (the proportion of climate skepticism remaining globally marginal), opinions tend to diverge more when it comes to associating the causes of this crisis with human activities.
In Spain, 65% of people agree that climate change is human-caused. In Sweden, this percentage drops to 60%. The gap widens further in non-European countries: only 18% of respondents in Indonesia and 21% in Yemen attribute human activity to global warming.
However, the link between anthropological activity and climate crisis has been a subject of broad consensus within the international scientific community for several decades, as confirmed by a study published in October 2021 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. – AFP Relaxnews
