SHOCK, HORROR: Poll finds strong majority support for declaring a climate emergency

In five countries —  Australia, the USA, Canada, the UK and Switzerland  — an impressive 382 local government authorities covering more than 33 million people have recognised or declared a climate emergency. And now polling conducted in Melbourne shows that a sizeable majority in that city support declaring a climate emergency.

Panel discussion at the City of Darebin's climate
emergency conference, September 2018. 

That will be a shock for some of Australia’s largest climate advocacy organisations, who have steadfastly refused to use the climate emergency framing, saying that such language is not plausible, is not supported by market research or that appeals to fear do not work. 

Perhaps they should tell that to David Wallace-Wells, the author of the just released book, “The Uninhabitable Earth”, which is destined to become a runaway best seller.

Wallace Wells says that “fear is what animated me.”  He explains: “To go back to the Second World War analogy, we did not mobilise in that way because we were optimistic about the future. We mobilised in that way out of fear, because we thought Nazism was an existential threat. And climate change is obviously an existential threat and it is naive to imagine we could respond to it without some people being scared”.

Read the story from Climate Code Red by David Spratt - “SHOCK, HORROR: Poll finds strong majority support for declaring a climate emergency.”

(Listen to the interview with David Spratt and to the interview with the former Mayor of Darebin, Kim Le Cerf, both on the ‘Climate Conversations’ podcast)