Print.IT Reseller - issue 87

BUSINESS BRIEFING 01732 759725 36 Epson has conducted a Climate Reality Barometer to capture the perceptions of climate change from 15,264 consumers across Europe, Asia, North America and South America. The results reveal a potentially damaging gap between climate reality and people’s understanding of its catastrophic effects How do people feel about the climate crisis? emergency. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that some human-driven climate change will take millennia to reverse 1 , and given a litany of global events – including the warmest July 2 ever recorded, wildfires 3 in Europe, North America and Asia, and floods 4 in China, Columbia and Germany – Epson’s Climate Reality Barometer’s findings suggest a triumph of optimism over evidence and a damaging Climate Reality Deficit. Henning Ohlsson, Director of Sustainability, Epson Europe, said: “As the climate emergency unfolds before our eyes, it’s of real concern that so many people fail to recognise, or even actively deny, its existence. This is a wake-up call for everyone – governments, businesses and individuals – to work together so that COP 26 makes the decisions and inspires the actions needed to mitigate climate change.” Reality check: Understanding vs action The Barometer suggests that optimism may be the result of a failure to recognise climate change and, therefore, its scale. Around three quarters of respondents see the link between climate change and rising global temperatures (77%), extreme weather (74%) and wildfires (73%). In contrast, awareness fell to just over half for events such as famine (57%), mass human migrations (55%) and insect outbreaks (51%). Many see responsibility to tackle the emergency belonging to state and industry sectors. Of those surveyed, more than one in four (27%) identify When questioned about their views on humanity’s ability to avert a climate crisis within their lifetimes, close to half of respondents (46%) state they are “very” or “somewhat” optimistic. This significantly outweighs just 27% who express that they are very or somewhat pessimistic. The most popular reasons supporting this optimism are growing public awareness of climate change (32%), the ability of science and technology to provide solutions (28%) and the move towards renewable energies (19%). The UK tops the list of European climate deniers, with more than one in 20 (6.1%) Britons not believing in a climate