We seem to spend a lot of time talking about climate change. It’s hailed as the biggest challenge of our time.

But for the great weight of the global population, is climate change on everyone’s lips? Is the fight to stem climate change almost akin to a basic human need? Is it firmly part of the zeitgeist?

Like, what’s the world really thinking and talking about when we silence our social media feeds, biased media and populist politicians?

Well, without doing a global survey it’s difficult to tell. But Google’s Trend tool can be instructive on what around 60% of the world is querying, researching and talking about and it’s one way to shed some light on my question.

So, I thought I’d run a simple compare against a bunch of other ‘basic needs’ to see if it really is at the top of the totem pole.

And when seeking to define the totem pole of human needs, who better to turn to than Abraham Maslow.

Maslow said that certain basic needs motivate our actions. He ranked these needs by importance in the form of a hierarchical bottom-up pyramid. The first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is what he calls physiological needs, i.e., the most basic needs of humans. While there are several, the headline needs are food, shelter and warmth.

The next level up is safety, with the spectrum extending across health and security, and with security extending across physical, financial and other forms.

In an attempt to squash all of the above into 5 keyword categories (not easy) I happened to select the following keywords:

Food
Housing (proxy for shelter)
Power (proxy for warmth)
Inflation (threat to financial security)
Climate Change (threat to physical security)

I selected the time period of 2004 to now (a pre-set in Trends which provides a long-term trend) and I selected ‘worldwide’ to ensure specific countries near ice caps or in extreme heat sinks did not skew the results, and in an attempt to smooth out media/press/political bias.

Here are the results.

Apart from one spike in the third week of April 2022, climate change has been the least searched term relative to the others.

Even if it’s replaced with adjacent keywords like ESG, environment, renewable energy, energy transition, Greta Thunberg, carbon, green energy, carbon change, batteries, etc., the same relative flatline is evident.

Relatively speaking, there appears to have been consistently more interest in warmth, food, shelter and financial security versus climate over the past 18 years and these appear to be the key ‘needs’ motivating our actions.

Seems that power has consistently occupied the highest level in the totem pole. Housing only topped it up until the GFC years when the property bubble burst.

Food interest has been steadily rising. I expect to see food continue to trend significantly higher.

But over the last 10 years, it’s been the power show.

A separate search for what’s been trending here in Australia over the past 30 days indicates that only two of the five keywords qualified as ‘trending’ topics (i.e., greater than 5,000 hits) - and they were power and inflation.

And while I concede inflation is a very hot worldwide topic at present, don’t forget the lack of inflation has also been a hot topic for at least 13 years (since it disappeared) so I don’t think it’s showing a false positive.

In any event, the trend points to inflation having been of more concern to those using Google, than climate change, consistently over the entire period.

Still, the results are scarily consistent with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Can I stay warm, can I eat, do I have a roof to sleep under? Do I have security of money and purchasing power?

It’s all very personal. It’s all close to home and timely. It’s not existential. It’s hand to mouth. Some would say it’s selfish, but then again, we are a selfish bunch.

Perhaps unless we are the victim of storm, flood, tsunami, extreme heat or cold, fire or famine, the larger more difficult and polarising planetary concerns get pushed further down the list.

Or, in the case of Maslow, further up the pyramid.

Mainly, this analysis makes me wonder (again) how much of the green energy transition narrative is being driven by social media influencers, populist politicians, the press and opportunistic businesses. Because most of the connected world seems to be motivated by other stuff.

Mike

PS: With 60% of the global population having access to an internet connection, Google Trends is one way to read the zeitgeist, other than for in the 10 or so countries where internet is either banned, censored or heavily restricted. And while effective in some ways, Trends is fallible and highly dependent on keyword nuances and other variables embedded in the algorithm. Consequently, please treat this analysis as a starting point guide for illustrative purposes only.

18 year Google trend shows we care more for power, food and housing than climate change