40% of Spaniards believe they will have to move due to climate change

More than a third of Spaniards (40%) believe they will have to move as a result of climate change, according to a climate survey published on Tuesday by the European Investment Bank (EIB), in which Spain appears as the fifth European country most concerned about the climate crisis.

The survey, which analyses citizens’ perceptions of climate change in the European Union, the United States and China, also provides data on the opinion of citizens of the latter two countries, 48 and 49% of whom believe they will have to leave their place of origin due to global warming and its effects.

Notably, the representative samples taken in China and the United States are much smaller than those taken in Europe, where respondents were more than 28,000, compared to 1,000 people asked in the other two countries.

Spain is also one of the countries whose citizens are most convinced that their actions “can make a difference in addressing climate change”: 80% of Spaniards believe that their actions can help mitigate it, a percentage ten points higher than the European average and that places Spain only behind Portugal.

In addition, 65% of Spaniards believe that climate change is reversible.

In this line, some of the most popular initiatives to fight against climate change taken by Spaniards are recycling (89% of Spaniards say they practice it), the use of reusable bottles and bags (75 and 89%, respectively), the purchase of local products (89%) and using less heating (80%).

The climate crisis is the most important “challenge” for 47% of Europeans, followed by lack of work and access to health services, according to the survey.

However, Europe is not the continent with the most climate concern since, according to the survey, Chinese citizens are the most sensitized, with 76% of respondents choosing climate change as their main distress.

On the other hand, only 39% of Americans opted for this answer, surpassed by access to the health system, the biggest concern of 45% of respondents in the United States.

The Chinese also stand out in awareness, with 80% believing that climate change can still be reversed and only 1% believing that it does not exist.

In Europe, 59% of respondents are confident of the possible reversal of the climate crisis and 9% still doubt its existence, while Americans are the most sceptical, with 18% of deniers and 54% of citizens seeing the reversal of climate change as possible.

Source: The Vanguard