ABSTRACT
In the wake of Copenhagen there is accumulating evidence that the public consensus around climate change is very fragile. For example, in the United Kingdom a BBC survey revealed that between November 2009 and January 2010 there had been an 8% rise in the proportion of adults not believing in global warming (Guardian 8 Feb. 2010). Two weeks later, an Ipsos Mori survey indicated that the proportion of adults who believed climate change is ‘definitely’ a reality had dropped from 44% to 31% over the previous year (Ipsos Mori 2010). Whether the swing in public attitudes was influenced by the failure of Copenhagen, by the media furore surrounding accusations of malpractice by researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and criticisms of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or by the unusually cold winter in the United Kingdom and United States is open to question. What cannot be doubted, however, is the fickleness of public opinion on this issue. Even before the attacks on the IPCC, in the late autumn of 2009 the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change published research indicating that over 50% of UK citizens did not believe that climate change would affect them, and only 18% believed that it will have an impact during their children’s’ lifetime (DECC 2009). Meanwhile in the United States the Pew Research Centre released findings from their latest survey of public opinion, which indicated that over the previous year the percentage of US citizens believing that there was no solid evidence of global warming had increased from 21% to 33% (Pew Research Centre 2009).
