PrintJust how important is 'action on climate change' to the world's general public?
Over on LinkedIn, climate rationalist Bjorn Lomberg posted an interesting chart showing just how important global warming and climate change issues were to the world's public, citing a huge survey of 10 million conducted by the United Nations.
The chart is here:
In the run-up to deciding the global targets that ended up being called the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN undertook a global survey of priorities, eventually covering almost 10 million people, as seen in Fig. 29. While it is only semi-representative, it is the only broad, global survey of its kind that tries to directly capture the priorities of the world. It asked people to prioritize 16 important issues, and the top-ranked items were very clear: education, health, jobs, an end to corruption, and nutrition. “Action taken on climate change” came in 16th of 16.
Lomberg's article focuses on the costs not matching the benefits of climate change action -- how the world can spend a trillion dollars a year on climate change measures and end up with a ... 1% ... drop in carbon compounds in the atmosphere. The problems there are obvious. His article, which is heavy academic lumber, is well worth pondering for that alone.
What's obvious to me is something he doesn't touch on -- how well it matches with a recent Rasmussen survey I wrote about here about U.S. media priorities -- which stand in sharp contrast to public priorities, which is so bad it coincides with a decline in the media and its influence.
The other thing that leaps out from that Lomberg chart is the question of exposure: How many years we've been steeped in global warming propaganda from not just the press but every corporation and public outlet (Try avoiding a global warming lecture on the explanatory plaques in front of the animal exhibits at the San Diego Zoo). Legislation is all about climate change, bullets are "green" and aircraft carriers have "gone green," nations have been pushed into recession and famine as a result of this global warming legislation, and America has lost its critical energy pipeline and energy independence itself, an event that has been indirectly tied to the attack on Ukraine. There's no getting away from global warming measures and global warming propaganda. A huge, corporate monster of money has been unleashed and a huge establishment full of rich old ladies and men controlling foundations and obsessed with global warming has gotten the hooks in throughout U.S. society.
Yet still, the public isn't buying this crap, not just the U.S. public, but the world public. Lomberg notes that in Africa, global warming barely registers as a public concern (0.3% said it did). Europe has its boosters, but the issue ranks only around 9 as a priority. The U.S. has consistently considered it garbage, always putting that issue at rock bottom where it belongs. And we certainly know that the rich people among the global elites may mouth their concern about it and donate to foundations, but they don't give up their private jets, their heated and air-conditioned mansions, or seafront properties.
Maybe that's because it makes sense to put junk science at the bottom of the heap and everyone knows it. It's easy to get by without global warming measures taking away your plastic bags. It's not so easy to get by when global warming measures take away your job, or deny you an education, or go to idiot projects while corruption and crime flourish. Those are bread and butter issues, non-negotiables, and those are the ones the public places at the top of its issues to be solves. The rest is la-la land stuff and people know it.
Now we are seeing the disasters brought on, not by global warming and all its chicken little warnings, but by global warming measures -- in Sri Lanka, in the Netherlands and in many other places. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to listen to Lomberg or better still, scrap the nonsense altogether.
