Climate change scepticism

There is plenty of disbelief in the theory of human made climate change in the United Kingdom according to a survey by the University of Cardiff in Wales. It is not hard to understand the reasons for climate change scepticism.

It seems from the survey that men are more sceptical than women. I have found that generally women are more ready to take up anti climate change measures than men.

Perhaps it is because women give birth and care for and nurture children in the womb. That involves a considerable investment in their personal resources and also a considerable sacrifice. Having made that investment and sacrifice, women are more alert to long term dangers than men.

I know that this is a generalisation, with all the inherent fallacies that generalisations contain and that roles are gradually changing in society. Nevertheless, there is a gender divide on climate change and there has to be an explanation for it.

“High earners” are more sceptical about climate change than low earners. This, I suspect, is because as humans we have a tendency to think wishfully, that whatever we do we are not causing harm. High earners have more money to spend and they do spend it. They fly extensively, buy and run expensive gas guzzling cars, buy and use power boats and indulge themselves to the detriment in terms of climate change and pollution to all of humanity. They will naturally wish to think that climate change caused by their activities is a fallacy.

According to the survey older people and people living in rural areas are more sceptical. This is not my experience, particularly in the case of those who live in rural areas; they are closer to the natural environment and experience the changes that global warming is already visiting upon us. I personally find rural dwellers very committed to the fight against climate change.

Clearly, people are becoming weary of climate change. It is not hard to understand why. There is so much talk about reducing emissions, recycling, saving energy and “sustainability” but there is no action.

Politicians are always talking about climate change, but the laws they pass to address climate change have no effect. They are attempting to approach the problem incrementally and the public may assume that if the problem was as serious as politicians claim we would not adopt an incremental approach, but a drastic approach with immediate laws that bite and that require people to change they lifestyles immediately.

Many tax raising or political measures are dressed up as climate change measures. The public can see through the car scrappage scheme, which is not a climate change measure but in fact is a measure to protect the motor industry to enable cars to carry on polluting.

Recycling is used as a way of making citizens work harder to separate their rubbish but only a fraction of the rubbish separated is actually recycled. When we learn that containers of waste are dumped in Brazil or put into landfill sites in China, the British public wonders whether all their work has simply saved money and worsened the rubbish collection service without any significant environmental climate change benefit but creating disadvantages of public health and inconvenience.

Ultimately we are sceptical about climate change if we see these hollow pointless actions. If we understand the science the scepticism vanishes quite rapidly, but why should the public bother to understand the science of climate change when governments simply talk about it and give the impression that all will be well if we create an emissions trading scheme or similar half baked measures?

These are the tensions that cause scepticism in the minds of the public about climate change. In order to persuade people about the seriousness of climate change governments must enact tough laws and take serious measures. Otherwise their incremental approach will leave this planet without adequate measures to fight climate change

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