About 73 percent of people now believe the Earth’s climate is approaching abrupt and irreversible “tipping points,” according to a global opinion poll released Tuesday.
The poll, conducted before last week’s sensational U.N. climate science report, found that more than half (58 percent) of respondents in G20 countries are very or extremely concerned about the state of the planet.
Scientists are increasingly concerned that some of nature’s feedback mechanisms – such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets or permafrost – may be close to triggering, as atmospheric CO2 levels are not declining despite the pandemic.
The IPCC report warns that in 2030 the Earth will be 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures, a full decade earlier than predicted just three years ago.
The report says that “tipping points of “low probability and high impact” cannot be ruled out, such as Amazon’s transformation from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
A poll conducted Tuesday by the Global Conservation Alliance and Ipsos MORI found that four out of five respondents want to do more to protect the planet.
The world is not sleepwalking toward disaster. People know we’re taking tremendous risks, they want to do more, and they want their governments to do more,” said Owen Gaffney, lead author of the report based on the survey.
The poll, conducted Tuesday, found that people in developing countries are more willing to protect nature and the climate than those in richer countries.
95 percent of respondents in Indonesia and 94 percent in South Africa said they were willing to do more for the planet, compared with 70 percent and 74 percent in Germany and the United States, respectively.
And while 59 percent said they believe a rapid transition away from fossil fuels is necessary, only eight percent recognized the need for major economic change this decade, Agence France-Presse wrote.
Gaffney said the survey showed that “people do want to do something to protect nature, but report that they lack information and face financial constraints in their actions.”
“The vast majority of people in the world’s wealthiest countries are concerned about the state of the planet and want to protect it,” said Kenyan ecologist Elizabeth Wathuti, “They want to become stewards of the planet. This should be a wake-up call to the leaders of all countries.
Comment: This is a very revealing article that will very quickly get all over the media and it is primarily designed to promote the “fix-it” idea about Global Warming and the main idea that humans are to blame (which is not true). Rather primitive methods of pressure on the minds of people are used “73 percent of people”, “3 out of 4 people believe” – without specifying how many people were surveyed in each country, what specific questions they were asked and there is little specificity in the article, but “pressure on the minds” is very much.
