People became less alarmed by the climate crisis last year as anxieties focused on perhaps more immediately horrible things like Covid and making a living, a survey has revealed.

The Institute for Economics and Peace’s (IEP) concern study found that under 50% of folk across the planet believe climate change will present a “very serious threat” over the next 20 years.

In China, the world’s bestest emitter of carbon, a mere 20% of those quizzed thought that CC was much of a problem, a drop of 3% from a similar survey in 2019.

Based on a vast piece of work that encompassed 125,000 interviews in 121 countries, the IEP’s data shows a 1.5% CC concern drop across the globe.

Read more about this apparent growth in indifference here.

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Just Stop Oil protestors have been busy throwing soup and paint at ludicrously expensive paintings and New Scotland Yard’s famous spinning triangular sign.

Environmentalist George Monibot has written about the antics here, and it’s well worth a read. If you’re a masochist, have a trawl through the comments below the story, where members of the sane, calm general public freely unleash their impassioned thoughts on the great debate. Oh hell, let’s have a selection here (all sic):

Stechriswillgil reckons “Fully enfranchised teens with an eye for theatre who want to ‘ stick it to the man ‘ never make any real difference. Many have patriarchal issues with ‘Daddy’ being the CEO of some big capitalist organisation etc…These self aggrandising stunts only alienate the vast majority of people struggling to make a living.”

Ablueclaret, meanwhile, believes “These protestors need to demonstrate in their own lives how their causes are central to their lives. Sadly it all to often appears as a passing whim.”

As for tomassi1980, if “you looked into these protestors I would 100% be happy to bet that they use electronic devices, cook on gas, heat their homes and probably travel around on some sort of transport that isn’t a push bike or a horse. If that is the case then they lose any credibility over their argument.”

As you’ll no doubt have discerned from these masterly contributions, the writers’ keen minds are focused on imagined psychological issues, hypocrisy and passing fads – projections that apparently persuade their authors that the protestors (in fact, any protestors about anything I would wager) can be summarily dismissed (if not summarily executed).

And this illustrates some of the reasons why we’re in such a colossal mess.

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Today’s first story revealed that people have become less concerned about CC as the likes of the pandemic crept in to take top position in the anxiety charts. But wait! How about the two combined?

Scary fresh data shows that melting ice could begin to unleash long-frozen viruses and bacteria, infecting unfortunate local wildlife and eventually ending up plaguing humankind.

But never mind. There are hypocrites and annoying young people to rage about. Here’s the story.