A survey has found that children are more worried about the impacts of climate change and the environment than other issues, including crime, racial and gender inequality, homelessness and Brexit.
The poll which was commissioned by the University College London first surveyed more than 1,000 parents across the UK in January where they were asked to select three topics which they believed were “most important to their children and to indicate whether they had spoken to them about any of the issues listed.
The parents were asked to think about their youngest child aged five to 18-years-old.
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At the end of the pool, 50% of parents picked the need to protect our environment and climate as one of the three most important topics, with 42 per cent saying they had spoken to their child about the issue.
While crime and violence were the next most important issue, chosen by 31 per cent of parents, discrimination faced by people of a different race or ethnicity was chosen by 27 per cent.
Just 8 per cent of parents chose the UK leaving the EU as one of the most important topics to their child, with 15 per cent of parents saying they had talked to their child about it.
According to reports, the polling was carried out to coincide with the launch by UCL of a new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education within the university’s Institute of Education.
The centre’s executive director, Professor Nicola Walshe, said that she was “quite shocked” at how the environment “overshadowed” so many other “big issues”, adding that the findings suggested that “eco-anxiety” in the younger generation is real.
Story was adapted from Inews.
