A majority of European Union citizens think their government will fail to tackle climate change, which Europeans view as the biggest challenge facing humanity this century, a survey published by the European Investment Bank showed.
The first release of the 2021-2022 EIB Climate Survey explores people’s views on climate change in a rapidly changing world.
The results from this release focus on how people perceive climate change and the actions they expect their country to take to combat it.
In all countries surveyed, climate change is seen as the biggest challenge for humanity in the 21st century.
The majority of EU citizens (58%) and Britons (55%) believe that their country will fail to drastically reduce its carbon emissions, as pledged in the Paris Agreement.
75% of EU citizens, 69% of Britons and 59% of Americans believe they are more concerned about the climate emergency than their governments.
The majority of EU citizens (51%) say government inactivity is why the climate crisis is so difficult to solve.
70% of EU citizens and 73% of Britons are in favour of strict government measures imposing changes on people’s behaviour to fight climate change.
World leaders and climate activists have earlier expressed shock towards the new ominous report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Earlier on Monday, an UN-appointed panel of experts said that the earth is getting so hot
that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past the most ambitious threshold
set in the Paris accord.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “code red” for humanity.
He stressed that it “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy the planet.”
Change Is Needed
Thus, world leaders and climate change agreed that something has to change to avoid the climate crisis.
However, the activist Greta Thunberg has expressed no surprise towards the IPCC report.
“It confirms what we already know from thousands of previous studies and reports that we
are in an emergency,” the 18-year-old wrote on Twitter.
“We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not
without treating the crisis like a crisis,” she added.
