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Quebec Ranks the Environment First!

Environmental issues top the list of concerns of Quebeckers, along with intolerance of others. Out of the list of twelve concerns the RHI submitted to survey participants, 90% respondents indicated that they were concerned about environmental issues and 46% rated their concerns as strong.

It should be noted that there is a direct relationship between respondent education level and this concern: 56% of individuals with a master's degree claimed to be strongly concerned about environmental issues, compared with 40% of those with a high-school diploma.

But the uneasiness about environmental issues takes on a whole new meaning, revealing the gravity of the situation, when we realize that nearly half of respondents (48%) believe that the human race will be unable to solve environmental problems, whereas only 34% feel that it will and 17% have no opinion. In other words, more people think that humankind will not survive.

In this regard, the optimism of men clearly stands out against the negativism of women. Indeed, 41% of men believe that the human race will be able to solve environmental problems, whereas only 28% of women think so.

And to add even more weight to this sad observation related to the environment, a survey carried out in parallel by the RHI revealed that 54% of the population feels powerless to deal with these problems.

These data denote that the public views such issues somewhat fatalistically, not to say cynically. Indeed, people appear to perceive themselves as being completely helpless with respect to these issues and have trouble believing that their daily actions could play a positive role on the ultimate outcome.

The sole positive element brought to light by this survey is raising public awareness of environmental issues. More importantly, the individuals who are more optimistic about the problems seem to have a greater propensity for happiness, since the RHI of those who believe that the human race will win out is 78.00, while that of those who believe the opposite is 72.60. Will interest in and optimism about the environment make people happier? Quite possibly.

It is also interesting to note that optimism about environmental problems increases with age, education level, and income. Also, anglophones shows more optimism than francophones.