ABSTRACT
Many British people say that they are concerned about the effects of human and natural activity on the country’s environment. However, an Ipsos MORI poll in March 2010 found that the economy, race relations, unemployment, crime, health care and education were of greater concern to respondents than the environment and pollution (6 per cent) or rural life and the countryside (1 per cent). Furthermore, respondents to a MORI Social Research Institute poll in May 2004 felt that environmental problems could be tackled only through international agreement and not by individual nations. But global attempts to avert environmental damage from the Kyoto Convention in 1973 to the Copenhagen Conference on climate change in 2009 have not been encouraging. Meanwhile, scepticism about the scientific data on climate change has grown.
