Date published: 2008/11/26
The BBC says:
An opinion poll in 11 countries has produced what organisers term a "global mandate" for action on climate change.
About half of the respondents wanted governments to play a major role in curbing emissions, but only a quarter said their leaders were doing enough.
In developing countries, a majority of people were prepared to make "lifestyle changes" to reduce climate change.
The survey was commissioned by the HSBC Climate Partnership, which includes business and environmental groups.
Lord Nicholas Stern, who led the 2006 Stern Review into the economics of climate change and now works as a special advisor to the HSBC partnership, said this amounted to a global mandate for stronger action.
"It does show that people in the world expect their governments to take strong action as as matter of responsibility, and hope they will work with other governments to take action," he told BBC News.
"It is not a story which says 'I will do something only if others do'."
There are many problems with this survey. First of all, you can get any result you want from a survey by slanting the questions. Indeed, hardly any surveys of this sort do not suffer from this kind of bias.
Secondly, the so-called HSBC Climate Partnership is a front for four so-called environmental organisations: Climate Group, Earthwatch, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and WWF, who have somehow convinced HSBC to throw 100 million dollars at them. These organisations just happen to like the results of the opinion poll, or at least the bits they have released. It is always suspicious when the results of a survey just happen to back the policies of the organisation that funds the survey (leading back to the first point, that the survey was probably biased).
And on the HSBC Climate Partnership website there is no detailed information to support this survey, indeed, the survey is not even mentioned (but the website is rather shallow). So we do not know what the survey questions were, and we do not have the detailed results so that we can filter them independently of the HSBC Climate Partnership bias.
Even if the survey was unbiased, and even if the results published by the BBC happen to accurately reflect the entire results, and not just represent a cherry-picked corner, the results would still be fairly meaningless. People are always happy to claim to third parties that they are greatly concerned about the world. Meanwhile back in the real world that is not the case.And on that point, what Stern is reported to have said is particularly laughable. It is not a story which says anything in particular. It certainly does not say that "I will do something even if others do not", which is what Stern is bizarrely claiming. And has Stern himself decided to "do something even if others do not"? Somehow one doubts it. No doubt he still flies all over the world at a moment's notice. No doubt he still lives in an expensive house (or two or three or four). No doubt he still commands a huge salary and/or pension. Stern consumes far more than the average British citizen, never mind the average citizen of the world. Stern, and people like him, are a big part of the problem. Let him unilaterally reduce his wealth to that of an average citizen before he expects ordinary people to "make lifestyle changes".
It is quite amazing that the BBC can publish a story like this with a straight face.
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