Many climate change solutions involve changes in consumption patterns, significant investments and austerity measures that politicians are afraid to make because they could prove unpopular.
Apart from the compulsory expert opinions, we think people’s will should be included in the decision-making process as well. We believe many individuals would be willing to make changes in their lives provided the alternatives to meet their needs.
We created this survey to identify the solutions that would be the most feasible and beneficial. We think administrations could use the input gathered from these answers to develop solutions that would be welcomed and encouraged by the community.
Here are some of the questions we posed, just to give you a taste of it. If you want to take part in the survey, you are invited to give your own answers here.
We ran the survey among the participants in the conference. Then we tried to illustrate how the answers could be used to devise a strategy for making a given community more environmentally responsible.
A good example is the following question:
While it’s hard to match the journey time of planes by train or bus, the answers show that other more accessible measures could have a positive impact too. For example investing in the infrastructure so that trains have better connections would determine many people to prefer them over planes.
The price is also discouraging. We all know that currently the price of plane tickets is so low because the industry is heavily subsidized. If most of the subsidies for domestic flights would be directed to trains, the impact could be significant.
Another set of insights can be drawn from the following answer:
An overwhelming number of people would be happy to buy local seasonal products provided they were more accessible. Helping farmers to incorporate their products into existing supermarkets would a big impact for both farmers and consumers.
Apart from the pragmatic benefits of such a strategy, we believe this kind of involvement would also help alleviate some of the powerlessness people feel when it comes to climate change solutions.
