Green response to Climate Change poll

5th July 2007

Green Councillor Bernard Little has hit out at the media after a poll revealed that a majority of people in the UK believe that scientists aren’t agreed about the facts of climate change – or that it is being caused by human activity.

According to latest figures by pollsters Ipsos-MORI, some 56 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Many leading experts still question if human activity is contributing to climate change”. Just 22 per cent disagreed.

Mr Little said: “This is very worrying. Politicians will never take the steps necessary to cut emissions unless voters demand that they do, and they won’t demand it if they don't believe that human activities are responsible for changing the climate in the first place.

“The media are, at least in part, to blame. Because they want to seem balanced - or perhaps because they like controversy - discussions about climate change tend to have a naysayer arguing either that climate change isn’t happening, or that it isn’t manmade. It's like insisting on having a holocaust-denier to balance any report about the second word war.

“But the fact is that almost every scientist in the world agrees that climate change is happening, that it is being fuelled by human activity, and that our best chance of reducing the impact is to dramatically cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.

“By suggesting otherwise the media is unwittingly promoting dangerous scepticism about climate change – and undermining our chances of doing anything about it. ”

ENDS

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