Poll: 80% of Czechs consider global warming a serious problem

Global warming is seen as a problem by 80 percent of Czechs, about 20 percent more than eight years ago, according to a public opinion poll conducted by CVVM. In the same poll, 92 percent of Czechs considered the pollution of oceans and contamination of drinking water major issues.

In polls conducted in 2006 and 2007, global warming was considered either a serious or very serious problem by over 80 percent of Czechs. That percentage gradually declined to 61 percent in 2013, and has been slowly rising since. It now stands at about 80 percent, according to the latest poll.

A greater number of Czechs are concerned about the pollution of oceans, air, and agricultural land, shrinking rainforests, and the exhaustion of raw material deposits.

Women tend to assess the situation as more serious than men.

"In terms of the respondents' age, there are practically no differences, except for the fact that with their rising age, people assess the agricultural land contamination as a more serious problem," a CVVM spokesperson stated.

Over the past polls, Czechs have considered the rising levels of trash in oceans and drinking water contamination the most urgent problems. Drinking water shortages have also been identified in recent years.

Czech assessment of the disappearance of rainforests, contamination of agricultural land, exhaustion of raw material sources, and the disappearance of plant and animal species has been relatively stable across recent polls.

"The trend of people's assessment of the operation of nuclear power plants as a global problem is rather hard to follow," the CVVM said.

In 2011, the operation of nuclear power plants was assessed as a problem by a record-high 60 percent of Czechs, which experts ascribed to the influence of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan.

In the latest poll, which CVVM conducted on 904 respondents from June 26 to July 11, the number of those calling nuclear power plants a problem reached 55 percent, 6 percent more than last year.

"This is the only statistically significant change compared with last year's results," the CVVM stated.