Apparently nobody can agree on who needs to take environmental responsibility

'We need to become one ecosystem too and work together to address the threats to the world we live in.'

There’s a few things we can all agree on: Colin Firth has aged like a fine wine, The Mummy reboot didn’t need to happen and we need to do more for the environment. In the case of the latter however, it turns out that while we can all happily agree on that - we can't agree on who’s responsible for the current state of the world. (How about that climate-change induced summer today, everybody?)

In a survey conducted by Legal & General Investment Management, it turns out that less than a third of people think that it’s their personal responsibility to minimise their impact on the environment (31%). Before you leap to conclusions about their selfishness however, it’s because another third (31%) believe it’s the government’s responsibility and another 15% think businesses should be ‘leading the way in protecting the environment’. 11% of people simply threw their hands up in the air and admitted they didn’t know.

It turns out there’s a massive division between people aged under 25 and those over 45, as 40% of those 25 and under believe that the government should be the ones ‘maintaining the planet’ versus 29% aged 45 to 55. On the flip side, 38% of those aged 45+ think that it’s an individual’s responsibility to do so in comparison to 21% of those under 25.

Dame Helena Morissey, who was involved with the project, said of the findings, ‘The environment is one big ecosystem. We need to become one ecosystem too and work together to address the threats to the world we live in. It is not any one business, government, or person’s responsibility to save the planet.’

In that vein, she and Legal & General Investment Management want people to start using their own power (and money) to make an environmentally-positive change to their daily lives. In their new Own Your World campaign, they encourage people to start investing in businesses that take the environment seriously and want to see a greener cities and a greener future.

She said, ‘Businesses play a major part in what happens to our world and we can encourage them to take the right actions. Investors own businesses; we can have much more influence than is currently understood. We can write our own future. Legal & General’s new Own Your World campaign is about empowering a generation to drive change together, understand the crucial role that businesses play in making progress possible, and to take more control of their financial futures. Collectively we really can do something about the issues we care about – it’s dangerous to assume someone else is taking care of it!’