Just over half of people in Clare know climate change is mostly caused by human activities.
A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency has revealed Clare is below the national average when it comes to the amount of people who understand humans’ role in the climate emergency.
Based on data from 5,312 respondents nationwide, the EPA Climate Change in the Irish Mind Climate Opinion Maps aim to show how climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support vary from county to county and from region to region.
According to the findings, 81% of Clare residents worry about climate change which is just 1% shy of the national average, with 94% agreeing it will harm future generations.
Clare people ranked highly when it came to concern around the potential future effects of weather on their county, with 78% worried that extreme weather will harm their community, 77% fearing severe storms, 66% concerned about the effects of flooding, and 65% wary of rising sea levels, all of which were above the national average.
On the subject of climate policy, 96% of people here support government grants to encourage cleaner heating systems while 95% advocate for using fossil fuel taxes in order to develop clean energy sources and improve transportation infrastructure.
Notably, only 46% of Clare people expressed their support for higher taxes on petrol and diesel cars which was 5% below the national average.
In term of knowledge of climate change, 93% of people here said climate change is happening while 81% claimed to know a lot about the subject.
Despite this, only 51% knew that climate change is mostly caused by human activities while just 29% were aware agriculture is Ireland’s largest pollution source.
