People who are most concerned about climate change use more electricity than those who believe it to be not so serious a threat, a government study has found.
The Household Electricity Survey, commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, said that this discrepancy may be due to the fact that older people, who are most likely to not see climate change as a threat, are generally more frugal with their energy consumption:
“Households that said the effects of climate change are too far into the future to worry them use less, rather than more, electricity. However, this was largely due to their age: older households (over 65) were much more likely to say climate change is too far off to worry them, and also had lower energy use,” the authors said.
However, even with over-65s removed, there is still only a weak trend suggesting that people who profess to care about the environment actually do more to cut their energy consumption.
The survey also recommended ways that various social groups could save energy. Authors said that wealthier individuals could benefit more from having smaller refrigerators, while those less well off could save more energy than wealthier individuals by buying smaller TVs.
Peter Lilley, a Conservative member of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee, is quoted in the Telegraph as saying: “The survey exposes the hypocrisy of many who claim to be ‘green’: the greater the concern people express about global warming the less they do to reduce their energy usage.”
Last month, it was revealed that Greenpeace’s international director, Pascal Husting, commuted between his home in Luxembourg and work in Amsterdam twice a month by plane. Breitbart London calculated that the carbon footprint generated would be equivalent to leaving a low-energy light bulb switched on for 220 years, or the average household energy consumption for two years.
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