Downturn fails to dampen Europeans support for climate measures

The majority of Europeans are highly concerned about climate change, willing to take action against it and broadly in favour of corporate and government measures to curb carbon emissions, according to one of the largest surveys of public attitudes towards global warming ever undertaken.

The survey of 30,170 citizens across the EU's 27 member states was commissioned by the European Parliament and Commission and found that there was substantial support for the bloc's wide-reaching plans to cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for Environment, said the results underlined the urgent need for the member states to approve the commission's climate and renewable energy proposals before the end of the year.

According to the survey, three quarters of respondents regard climate change as a serious issue, while 56 per cent believe tackling it will have a positive impact on the economy.

However, almost half felt unclear on how they should act to tackle climate change and the vast majority felt that neither businesses nor governments were doing enough to address the issue.

Guido Sacconi, chairman of the European Parliament Temporary Committee on Climate Change, said that the results confirmed that the EU and member states had to step up efforts to promote low carbon lifestyles and activities. "The fact that many Europeans say that they do not have enough information, in particular on the actions that citizens could take, clearly indicates that we have to think about initiatives and measures to spread this knowledge more widely, especially among the most vulnerable groups of our population," he said.

There were positive signs, however, for providers of green goods and services and in particular renewable energy providers with a significant 44 per cent of respondents claiming they would be willing to pay more for energy produced from low carbon sources.

A spokesman for the European Parliament said that the results suggested that concerns over the global economy were failing to dampen the public's enthusiasm for environmental measures. "There is a sense that the environment is now entrenched as an issue and even in these difficult economic times people take it seriously and are clear that something needs to be done," he said.

The results come ahead of a crucial vote later today by the Parliament's industry committee on the package of renewable energy measures included in the Commission's climate change strategy.

MEPs are expected to vote in favour of binding targets to ensure 20 per cent of the bloc's energy mix comes from renewable sources by 2020 and agree to a compromise on controversial targets for the use of biofuels that would still require to 10 per cent of transport fuels to come from biofuels by 2020, but would ensure that four per cent comes from so-called "second generation biofuels ".