Public Doesn't Understand Global Warming

[Guest guest]

Public Doesn't Understand Global Warming

 

August 16, 2006 — By Dr. David Suzuki, David Suzuki Foundation

Have you ever been to a focus group? They're very odd. Often used in marketing

research, these small selections of randomly chosen people are brought together

as a sampling of public opinion to gauge how folks feel about a particular

product or issue.

 

Recently, my foundation conducted a focus group about global warming to see

where people are at in their understanding of this complex and challenging

problem. The results? Let's just say they were disconcerting, to say the least.

 

Simply put, most people don't have a clue. The majority felt that global warming

was a pretty important problem and they were concerned about it. But when

pressed as to why it was a problem or what caused the problem, all heck broke

loose.

 

Apparently, according to the average Joe, global warming is happening because

we've created a hole in the ozone layer, allowing the sun's rays to enter the

atmosphere and heat up the earth -- or something like that. The cause of the

problem is cars, or airplanes, or aerosol cans. No one really knows for sure.

 

This is really quite remarkable. I would have thought that such confused

understandings of the issue would have been commonplace five or six years ago,

but with global warming being in newspapers on practically a daily basis this

spring, on the front cover of magazines, in theatres (An Inconvenient Truth),

and a hot political issue as well, surely people would get it by now.

 

Apparently I was wrong. People don't get it. This is a big problem, because if

people don't get it, then they don't really care, so politicians and CEOs don't

really care, and status quo rules the day. And blindly we march into the sunset.

 

But while science magazines are all talking about carbon sequestration and

climate-forcing mechanisms, the average person is still trying to decipher the

nature of the problem itself. True, few citizens need to understand the

complicated nuances of atmospheric science or the various mechanisms of the

Kyoto Protocol, but people cannot care about things they do not understand. If

our leaders are to take the issue seriously, the public must have at least a

basic understanding of it.

 

So, to clarify -- the ozone layer is a part of the atmosphere way up high that

helps shield the earth from the sun's most harmful rays. A couple of decades

ago, scientists realized that some of the chemicals we were using in our

industries and homes were finding their way into the upper atmosphere, reacting

with the ozone and destroying it. Scientists were concerned that if this

continued, it would thin the vital protective layer, leading to increased skin

cancers and crop damage. They sounded the alarm bell, the international

community responded with the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting

substances, and today the ozone layer is gradually healing itself.

 

Global warming is a quite different phenomenon. Again, it's a human-made

problem, but this time it's due to the heat-trapping gases we are putting into

the atmosphere from our industries, cars and homes. These gases act like a

blanket, keeping more heat near the earth's surface. More heat also means more

energy in the atmosphere, which means more frequent or severe extreme weather

events like droughts, storms and floods.

 

With each new piece of research, the expected effects of global warming become

clearer, more urgent and more disturbing. Scientists say this will be one of the

biggest challenges humanity will face this century. Right now we are not

tackling the issue fast enough or direct enough to escape the most severe

consequence.

 

So if you understand what global warming is, and what it isn't, please tell your

friends. Please speak up and help ensure that we don't continue to grope blindly

into the future, searching in the darkness for a light switch. Because at this

rate, by the time we finally reach it, it may no longer work.

 

Take the Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

 

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