Almost all Japanese see global warming: warm winters top sign
The Yomiuri Shimbun, in conjunction with goo Research, recently published the results of a survey conducted between the 9th and 11th of March on the subject of global warming.
Demographics
1,107 members of goo Research’s internet monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50% of the sample was male, 22% in their twenties, 18% in their thirties, 21% in their forties, 17% in their fifties, and 21% aged sixty or older.
Note that the winter of 2006/2007 was very mild, with no snow falling in Tokyo during the official winter period, the first time this had occurred since records began in 1877, thus perhaps focusing minds on the topic. In addition, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had recently opened in Japanese cinemas.
Although this survey reports broad support for charging for plastic bags at checkouts, according to some statistics I saw, these bags represent just 2% of all household rubbish, in constrast to other plastic food wrappers making up almost 30% of the average garbage bag. The defense I saw of the policy was that the fees may engender awareness of the overuse of wrappings thus encourage people to use less, but it is the manufacturers who do the overwrapping, so there is little that the consumer can do to influence this, I fear.
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