Why are so few people donating to environmetal campaigns?
24/10/2007 Guardian see News List for this date. Understanding this one is vital.We know that people prefer to donate to projects when they believe that their money will be used specifically for a project that they can clearly understand and that they believe will make a big difference. There are obvious problems setting up climate change projects to meet these criteria. When people donate because they want to feel that they are helping to make the world a better place etc there is the problem of credibility - can we succeed in making the world a better place, especially when that would require changes in lifestyles that many people believe are impossible to achieve or unacceptable in severity. With such difficulties it is not surprising if most donors deny the reality of what will happen over the coming decades (with or without effective measures to reduce global carbon equivalent emissions) and act as if the status quo will continue indefinitely and given this ill-founded sense of security, they can make some worthwhile improvement if they support a project with very limited but, to them, very plausible aims.