While acknowledging the overall need to take action, the UK public doesn’t believe that addressing the climate crisis should be solely based on their individual actions, according to a new survey. They ask for governments and the private sector to take the lead in emissions reduction, instead of citizens undertaking stringent lifestyle changes.

Researchers at the University of Southampton asked 381 people in Southampton about their attitudes to climate change and their willingness to change behaviors. They found that the people are well-informed about climate change, with many showing high levels of concern. But their awareness doesn’t necessarily translate into action.

“Working out who is responsible for climate change is highly complex and highly contested. However, we must address this question if we are to find solutions,” Alice Brook, lead researcher, said in a news statement. “Households are the largest direct contributor to carbon emissions in the UK, mostly due to heating and travelling.”

Who’s to blame?

The idea of measuring individual carbon footprints is to hold each person accountable for their contribution to climate emissions, encouraging people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. However, most of the emissions aren’t generated by individuals, but rather by industries and large-scale commercial activities, such as oil companies.

A group of 100 companies has been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, the main ones being ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron, according to a 2017 report. Also, while companies have implemented climate pledges, nearly all will fail to deliver on their goals, according to a report last year.

This doesn’t mean that individual actions don’t have an impact. However, it’s a smaller one and concentrated among the wealthiest. A recent report from Oxfam found that the 1% of the population that concentrates most of the wealth produced as much emissions in 2019 as the five billion people that make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity.

The survey’s results

Of the 381 respondents to the survey, over 90% said climate change is “an extremely serious problem” or a “very serious problem.” Over half of the people said that responsibility for addressing it lies with everybody “governments, business, individuals and campaigners,” while 30% said responsibilities lie within the national government.

Respondents were most likely to make simple, low-impact changes like cutting down on overseas travel and changing lightbulbs. However, bigger behavior changes such as changing diets and more expensive changes such as replacing electrical appliances with more efficient ones were the changes people were least likely to make.

“People feel overwhelmed by the climate change situation and don’t know where to start or which changes to make — so it must be down to someone else, such as our business and governmental leaders, to take action,” Ian Williams, study author said. Without this intervention, the public won’t likely make big changes, Williams added.

The study was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.