In my family, about 5 out of 100 people believe climate change is even real. So ya, I think the average at this point is "I'm ambivalent, climate change may not even be real. But mostly I don't care"
The poorest in society are the lowest CO2 emitters - they don't fly often, many don't own a car and use public transport - they can't afford meat in every meal - can't afford air con in summer or heating in winter.
Conversely, the wealthiest are frequent flyers, are chauffeured about in SUVs and rarely walk. They have everything they'll ever need and don't concern themselves about running the AC or heating.
They're preaching to the poor guy about what he needs to do to stop climate change.
Even if the poor guy wanted to care, he can't do much, but the people who claim to care could do a lot more, if they really did care.
The media circus tries to put the blame on the poor, while ignoring the emissions of the celebrities and treating them as royalty. Is it any wonder most people simply don't care?
If the media cared, they would be making villains of the celebrities and idols of the poor.
If you’re talking about a world democracy like the USA, the consumption gap between rich and poor effectively doesn’t matter from a climate change perspective. You could vanish the top 75% of Americans and still we’d have a climate change problem (albeit less of one for sure).
People get confused by some of the research because it often publishes emissions by who owns the asset emitting and not who consumes it (eg Starr et al paper breaks down both, and consumption vs ownership is wildly different, and you can tell what bent people have by which number they pick to report on…)
Another way I’d put it: if you’re not ready for gas to be $40/gallon and beef to be $100/lb ground, then you’re not really ready to fight climate change. And no one is, so it’s not going to happen unless we get a technology miracle.
Lots of things are wealth gap problems. Climate change is not, it’s an everyone problem.
