Which of These Issues is the Most Concerning

Children Say the Environment Comes First

In this survey we tried to find out what it is that worries children the most. The irrefutable conclusion is that it is the environment that is uppermost in their minds.

Voters were given a choice of 3 environmental topics and 3 topics not directly connected to the environment. All 3 environmental topics outscored the others. In fact, over 80% of the vote went for the environment with a whopping 43% saying that Global Warming was the main problem.

Many experts endorse the feelings of our young respondents and on the Union of Concerned Scientists Website they tell us that ‘Global warming is ALREADY having a significant and harmful effect on our communities, our health, and our climate.’

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Do Most Adults Agree?

Adults do agree that the environment is extremely important but it seems that they are not as environmentally conscious as our youngsters.

How do we know this? Let’s explain… We tell adults that our surveys are just for young students but you know what adults are like, they can’t resist poking their nose in! As a result we get many adults who also vote on our site each week. Ordinarily we just ignore their votes but on this occassion we thought we would compare the views of 5 to 17 year olds with the views of adults. Let’s take a look at the results.

You’ll notice that in each category the adults (that’s the orange lines) rate environmental concerns less highly than our young students do – the green lines.

Now we might be a little cynical but could that be something to do with the fact that older people are not expecting to stick around for as long?

For instance let’s take a look at the record of Donald Trump – the leader of the largest economy in the world, the USA. Just 5 days ago Reuters reported that Mr Trump skipped a G7 session on Climate change and said that American wealth is based on energy and he will not jeopardize that for dreams and windmills!

In the year 2060 our young voters will be in their middle-age but what of Mr. Trump? He is now 73 years old so unless he lives to be 114 he will never see the results of the policy decisions he is currently making. We have to wonder how the world will judge his presidency when we get to 2060.

Other Environmental Issues

It sometimes appears that there are so many ways that humans are damaging the world that it is hard to keep track. To keep up to date you could do much worse than keep an eye on the website of Chris Packham. As well as being a television personality and one of the greatest environmental campaigners of our age, this is a guy who doesn’t pussy-foot around – he tells it as it is!

The Numbers for This Week's Survey

These are the percentages of respondents who voted for each issue of concern this week:

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