Climate Change: Europeans Believe It’s Serious

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Europeans are no longer cloudy regarding their opinion about global climate change: they are now unequivocal and say that climate change is a “very serious problem’’. According to a recent survey, the majority of people in the European Union now see climate change as a grave issue to grapple with. In fact, EU residents see climate change as the second most serious problem facing the world, after poverty, hunger and lack of drinking water (which were all clubbed together as a single issue).

The results of the European Commission-backed TNS Opinion & Social poll show that, of the nearly 27,000 interviewees, 68 percent think that climate change is a “very serious problem,” up from 64 percent back in 2009, while 89 percent consider the problem either “very serious” or “fairly serious.”

Connie Hedegaard, European Union’s climate change commissioner, called the survey’s results “encouraging”.

Considering that in some countries there is still this debate whether climate change is happening at all, it is really reassuring to see that the European public understands the gravity of the climate challenge, the commissioner said.

With this sort of agreement on the scope of the problem, will people be able to agree on which actions should be taken to alleviate the issue?

Therein lies the rainbow of hope.