About 40% of Australian women without children say they are hesitant to have children because of climate change, a new survey suggests.
The survey, on attitudes about the effects of global warming, also found that half of Australians are very or very concerned about climate change and two in five believe the climate will be “much warmer” by 2050.
Commissioned by Clive Hamilton, a professor of public behavior at Charles Sturt University, and brought to Roy Morgan in Morgan, more than a third of voters believe that the climate will not change.
The survey – which included a nationally representative sample of 2,000 people – found labor, greens and independent voters in the three effects of climate change.
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Concern about climate change is more strongly correlated with education level than with age.
Among parents, three in five Labor voters expressed high concerns about their children’s future in a changing climate, compared to one in five coalition voters.
“Compared to men, women expect it to be hotter, more anxious, and feel more insecure because of the change in danger warnings.
Among non-parents, 40.4% of women said they were moderate or hesitant to have children because of climate change, but only 17% of men (just one in six) reported the same.
Hamilton suggests that women’s greater reluctance points to a “gendered calculus of risk”.
“The evidence we have suggests that care values make women more open to the alarming nature of scientific events and the visceral impact on people,” he said.
Rising levels of climate concern could result in a decline in Australia’s birth rate, Hamilton added.
“There is a huge disconnect between the conversations that exist among young people about having children, and government and policy discussions about the Demographic Future,” he said. “This survey shows that this is an issue that cannot be ignored.”
The findings have been revised in accordance with the years 2019 The Foundation Conservation Foundation The survey, which found that one in three Australian women under 30 said they were putting off having children again because of concerns about “unrealistic futures from climate change”.
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The Roy Morgan survey also included respondents in areas affected by floods and fires since 2019. Living through extreme weather events has a small effect on climate anxiety, it found.
“People have ways to explain it, or attribute it to natural causes, or … don’t want to blame climate change for their mistake,” Hamilton said.
Prof Iain Walkog, a Social Psychologist at the University of Melbourne who was not involved in the survey, that the search in Australia has allocated little research, that “has experienced a lot of research with little research with little research, that” what difference the events of the time, and what difference has been made small “.
“I think the explanation for the anti-repent effect is how people interpret the event at the time,” Walker said. “People who already accept antimropogenic change will accept a flood or heatwave as additional evidence that climate change is happening; those who already reject climate change will explain extreme weather events.”
Although the areas identified in the survey as being affected by extreme weather events outside the capital cities, it is known that the concern is about the cities than the climate regions than the climate regions than the climate regions than the regional areas than the regional areas.