The social perspectives of climate change: Responding to policy gaps

Abstract

Fossil fuel sector has occupied a central place in all world economies for the last decades — enabling of nearly all the world’s economic sectors by providing a greater economic prosperity. The agriculture sector remains at the heart of it and playing a crucial role in the economy of developing countries. Despite of these greater benefits, the oil and gas sector accounts for two third of carbon dioxide emissions that cause the global warming and climate change that pose a great challenge to the agriculture sector. Developed nations have taken comprehensive steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but some developing nations yet to be taken decisive policy response about harmful effect of the climate change. Sri Lanka is identified one of the nation’s severely affected by climate change risks falling into this category and found to be policy deficiency compared with the developed economies. In this context, in developed economies public opinion has substantially influenced development of policy alternatives to investment in renewable energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions caused by fossil fuels. This benefits the agricultural sector because the agriculture is the sector worst hit by climate change. We obtained secondary data from the Google trends information and carbon dioxide emissions data from oil companies and used Excel spreadsheets to give graphic and numeric outputs in a time series using descriptive analysis method. The analysis reveals public concern in the United States influence on policy alternatives while Sri Lanka public concern about climate change and agriculture is highly unlikely influence policy alternative to avoid climate change risks.