The Department for Transport published the ”Public attitudes towards climate change and the impact of transport: 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009” report with the aim to provide the latest information on people’s attitudes towards climate change in relation to transport and to what extent attitudes have changed over the years. One of the discouraging results of the survey is that a large portion of the respondents (37%) still think that people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like, even if it causes damage to the environment. On the other hand, the report also shows that people are aware of the negative impact car travel has on climate change – the most commonly cited cause of climate change was road transport emissions with almost 60% of adults believing that individuals should try to limit their car use for the sake of the environment.
Even though the majority of respondents believe that transport emissions contribute to climate change, there is a difference in the attitude between those who use a car every day and those who travel by car less often. Only 16% of people using a car on a daily basis (whether as driver or passenger) were likely to say that they were very concerned about climate change. Also, those who used a car less often were somewhat more likely to say that they were prepared to change behaviour to help limit climate change than those who used the car more frequently.
Another useful fact for future government policies could be that the support for policies on ‘soft’ measures to encourage alternative modes of travel, such as improved public transport was much higher than those that would increase the cost of car travel. Also, pricing measures aimed at reducing car and plane use were not popular among the respondents.
The report covers:
The full report can be found here:
www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trsnstatsatt/climatechgejan2010report
