The Yale Climate review reported world wide research polling amongst facebook users, which indicates that there are six different types of climate audience or grouping.

The Alarmed are convinced climate change is happening, human-caused, and an urgent threat, and strongly support climate policies.

The Concerned think human-caused climate change is happening and is a serious threat, and support climate policies. However, they tend to believe that climate impacts are still distant in time and space, thus the issue remains a lower priority.

The Cautious have not yet made up their minds: Is climate change happening? Is it human-caused? Is it serious?

The Disengaged know little to nothing about climate change and rarely if ever hear about it.

The Doubtful do not think climate change is happening or believe it is just a natural cycle.

And the Dismissive are convinced climate change is not happening, human-caused, or a threat, and oppose most climate policies

slightly modified: Italics and line breaks added

I personally think, from my experiences, there are at least two other modes:

  • Anger: Climate change is happening, its no big deal, and people are trying to impose unwanted changes of life on us.
  • Doomer: Climate change is too advanced to be stopped, so we can’t do anything.

There is also the probable

  • My income is tied in with fossil fuels, so climate action is bad

But these are irrelevant to the current discussion

Yale remarks:

We find that the Alarmed are the largest group in about three-fourths (80 of the 110) of the countries and territories surveyed. In fact, half or more respondents in twenty-nine countries and territories are Alarmed: the five countries with the largest percentage of Alarmed are Chile (65%), Mexico (64%), Malawi (63%), Bolivia (62%), and Sri Lanka (61%). Czechia and Yemen have the smallest percentages of Alarmed (both 9%). In the United States, about one-third of respondents are Alarmed (34%)….

By contrast, relatively few respondents in any country or territory are Doubtful or Dismissive. Among major emitters, the United States has the largest proportion of Doubtful and Dismissive, more than one in five (22%).

The document does not gather together the data for the world. So lets gather together some figures for Alarmed and Concerned. Given the polling is of facebook users this is a restricted audience….

  • Mexico 93% of people are Alarmed or Concerned
  • Brazil 90%
  • Chile 83%
  • Spain 79%
  • Hungary 79%
  • Columbia 79%
  • Argentina 77%
  • South Africa 73%
  • Japan 72%
  • India 71%
  • Kenya 70%
  • Bangladesh 70%
  • Turkey 70%
  • Malaysia 68%
  • Singapore 68%
  • Jamaica 68%
  • Zambia 68%
  • UK 67%
  • Germany 66%
  • Canada 65%
  • Australia 63%
  • USA 59%
  • Nigeria 55%
  • Saudi Arabia 50%
  • Norway 41%
  • Yemen 26%

This indicates that there is a world wide interest in change.

So again we need to ask why there is so little movement towards change?