The 21st Century climate challenge

1The 21 st Century climate challengeFor all the progress thathas been achieved, thebattle for public heartsand minds is not yet wonduring and after high-level intergovernmentalmeetings. As little as five years ago, most largemultinational companies were either indifferentor hostile to advocacy on climate change. Nowan increasing number are pressing for action andcalling for clear government signals to supportmitigation. Many business leaders have realizedthat current trends are unsustainable and thatthey need to steer their investment decisions ina more sustainable direction.Throughout history public campaignshave been a formidable force for change. Fromthe abolition of slavery, through struggles fordemocracy, civil rights, gender equity andhuman rights, to the Make Poverty Historycampaign, public mobilization has creatednew opportunities for human development.The specific challenge facing campaigners onclimate change is rooted in the nature of theproblem. Time is running out, failure will leadto irreversible setbacks in human development,and policy change has to be sustained acrossmany countries over a long period of time. Thereis no ‘quick fix’ scenario.Opinion surveys tell a worrying storyFor all the progress that has been achieved, thebattle for public hearts and minds is not yet won.Assessing the state of that battle is difficult. Yetopinion surveys tell a worrying story—especiallyin the world’s richest nations.Climate change now figures prominentlyin public debates across the developed world.Media coverage has climbed to unprecedentedlevels. The film An Inconvenient Truth hasreached an audience of millions. Successivereports—the Stern review being an outstandingexample—have narrowed the space betweenpopular understanding and rigorous economicanalysis. The planet health warnings set out bythe IPCC provide a clear basis for understandingthe evidence on climate change. In the faceof all of this, public attitudes continue to bedominated by a mindset that combines apathyand pessimism.Headline numbers from recent surveysdemonstrate the point. One major cross-countrysurvey found that people in the developedworld see climate change as a far less pressingthreat than people in the developing world.For example, only 22 percent of Britons sawclimate change as “one of the biggest issues”facing the world, compared with almost one-halfin China and two-thirds in India. Developingcountries dominated the ranking for countrieswhose citizens see climate change as the world’smost worrying concern, with Brazil, Chinaand Mexico topping the league table. The samesurvey found a far higher level of fatalism in richcountries, with a high level of scepticism aboutthe prospects for avoiding climate change. 96Detailed national level surveys confirm thesebroad global findings. In the United States,climate change mitigation is now a subjectof intense debate in Congress. However, thecurrent state of public opinion does not providea secure foundation for urgent action:• Roughly four in ten Americans believe thathuman activity is responsible for globalwarming, but just as many believe thatwarming can be traced to natural patternsin the Earth’s climate systems alone(21 percent) or that there is no evidence ofglobal warming (20 percent). 97• While 41 percent of Americans seeclimate change as a “serious problem”, 33percent see it as only “somewhat serious”and 24 percent as “not serious”. Only 19percent expressed a great deal of personalconcern—a far lower level than in otherG8 countries and dramatically lower thanin many developing countries. 98• Concern remains divided along partypoliticallines. Democrat voters registerhigher levels of concern than Republicanvoters, though neither locates climate changenear the top of their list of priorities. On aranking scale of 19 electoral issues, climatechange registered 13 th for Democrats and19 th for Republicans.• Moderate levels of public concern are linkedto perceptions of where risks and vulnerabilitiesare located. In a ranking of publicconcerns, only 13 percent of people coveredwere most concerned about impacts on theirfamily or community, while half saw themost immediate impacts as affecting peoplein other countries, or nature. 9966 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2007/2008