Gen Z sees rising prices as a bigger issue than climate change, according to Epson’s Climate Barometer Report.
The report highlighted that 51 per cent of generation Z saw rising prices as a concern as opposed to 47 per cent considering climate change to be an issue.
The latest report from Epson is aimed at highlighting the attitudes of people of people born after 1995, the Gen Z.
The generation is also the generation that is born after the first COP was held in 1995, referred to as Gen COP in the report.
This generation, according to the report, have lived their entire lives knowing of and experiencing climate change.
While the generation might be more concerned about rising prices, it also happens to be the most optimistic age group that believes that the climate crisis will be solved.
According to the report, Gen COP is the most optimistic age group with almost half of them (49%) believing that we will solve the climate crisis within their lifetime.
In contrast, older age groups from 45-54 and 55+ age groups showcase the lowest optimism at 42 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.
However, the report also found that high optimism leads to different outcomes.
In the report, Gen COP recorded lower levels of actions taken towards improving the environment than that of the global average recorded in the same survey.
The report also recorded respondents that said that they would not take certain key actions that would help the environment.
On a global scale, while 38 per cent of respondents reported that they have already reduced international business and leisure travel, and a further 30 per cent said that that they plan to do so.
Almost one person in six, however, stated that “I will never do this” (17%).
Other actions that significant amount of people said that they would never do would are reducing consumption of animal products (18%), boycotting unsustainable brands (15%) and encourage friends and family to learn about the climate crisis (10%)
The Epson 2023 Global Climate Barometer was conducted from July 2022 to 2023, and surveyed 30,294 general respondents aged 16+ across 39 markets.
