Transport is one of those topics where you would be hard put to find someone with no opinions. In recent years, climate change has also become ripe for 'opinioneering'. Is it really happening? If so, are we the cause, or is it just a natural phenomenon? And what should we do to respond to the possible effects?
For the past couple of years, the Department for Transport (DfT) in the UK has added climate change to the subjects that it puts before the public in such exercises as the National Travel Survey. The DfT has just released the details of the latest survey of "Public attitudes towards climate change and the impact of transport". No need, then, to rely on those overheard conversations in the pub, or on the train, if you want to know what people think about the subject.
In reality, no one goes out to ask people solely what they think about climate change and transport. The questions are added to the Omnibus Survey of the Office for National Statistics, a "random probability survey of adults aged 16 and over living in private households in Great Britain". So the people lucky enough to be on the receiving end of the survey also rate climate change alongside health, crime/law and order, education, poverty, immigration and road congestion as "the most important issue facing Britain today".
Later on in the survey, which goes back three years and was last updated in August 2008, there are questions designed to elicit attitudes to air travel, car use and other areas where transport and climate change intersect. The first finding of note is that climate sceptics face an uphill struggle. "In all three years 81 per cent of adults said that they were very or fairly concerned about climate change, with a quarter being very concerned." It seems that just one in 10 adults were "not convinced or were unsure" whether the world/UK climate was being affected. This is a lower score than you sometimes see when you ask people about their belief in creationism.
Maybe, though, public concern has peaked. As the report of the survey puts it, "the proportion of adults considering climate change one of the top three most important issues facing Britain has changed over time (23 per cent felt this in 2006; 32 per cent in 2007; 27 per cent in 2008)".
The survey suggests that there may be rampant double standards in our attitudes to air travel. Nearly half of the people polled, 47 per cent, believed "Air travel should be limited for the sake of the environment". Most political parties would love to go into an election with that level of support. But when you factor in the travelling habits of the people who answer the question, support for this statement fell to 38 per cent among those who travelled by plane more than twice a year.
Politicians should certainly not get the idea that support for restrictions on air travel is an invitation to clobber this activity. As the report of the poll puts it, "Around a fifth of adults supported increasing the cost of air travel to help reduce transport emissions."
If you look at the things that people say they will do to counter the threat of climate change, responses that affect transport come after recycling and use of energy-saving light bulbs. The last thing they plan to do is to reduce how many flights they make. Nor will they use other forms of transport instead of flying.
Looks like business as usual, then. Don't even expect the younger generation, the people who will feel the real effects of climate change, to mend their ways. They appear to be even less concerned about climate change than those of us who will be long gone by the time the Thames laps around the bottom of Nelson's Column.
Further information:
www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trsnstatsatt/climatechngeandtranport1
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