DISINFO: Climate change is not such a big concern for citizens
SUMMARY
The Paris Agreement didn’t progress because whilst awareness on climate change mobilises the media, it is not a serious concern for regular citizens. Those concerns about the climate are not as real or pressing as we have been led to believe in Canada, the US, Eastern Europe and some Latin American regions.
RESPONSE
False claims misrepresenting the citizen perception of climate change. This is part of a recurrent Russian narrative on climate change designed to increase polarisation in Western societies. While in 2009 57 percent of Canadians thought that serious action on climate change should wait until the recession was behind, this problem is now concern number 1 for the citizens of the country. A recent survey from Yale University and George Mason University found that 69 percent of US citizens are “somewhat worried” about climate change and 29 percent are “very worried.” These are the highest values since the surveys began in 2008, and the “very worried” category shows an 8 percent jump compared to the previous survey published in April 2018. A study by Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project found that in Mexico and Central America, 81.5 percent characterized climate change as a “very serious” problem, with an additional 10.4 percent characterizing it as “somewhat serious”. South Americans followed close behind, with 75 percent answering “very serious” and 15.2 percent saying “somewhat serious”. In the Caribbean, 66.7 percent answered “very serious” and 21.9 percent said “somewhat serious.” According to another survey by the Pew Research Centre, released in April 2019, 66 percent of Hungarians and 55 percent of Poles think that global climate change is a major threat, while 26 percent and 31 percent of citizens in Hungary and Poland, respectively, consider it a minor threat. Only 6 and 10 percent of Hungarians and Poles don’t see it as a threat at all. Globally, 68 percent of citizens think it is a major threat and 20 percent see it as a minor threat, with only 9 percent dismissing it as a danger. You can see other examples of disinformation about climate change in our database, such as the alleged lack of evidence of human responsibility in climate change, the lies of environmental activist Greta Thunberg (who is in a war with white men), the weaponisation of climate issues by the West in order to prevent Russia's development or its use to distract the public from the real threats to humanity.