Official Word on Energy: Who Cares?
A survey of over 40,000 people around the world, undertaken by the Poe Center for Energy Awareness, shows the level of public trust in government and corporate information sources regarding energy to be the lowest in the survey's history.
52% of respondents call the reliability of official sources of information about energy "poor," with an additional 35% rating the reliability as only "fair." 13% of the respondents call governments and energy-related companies "good" information resources. No respondents described the official sources as "excellent."
"The global public simply sees governments and corporate actors as entirely too self-interested to be useful information resources," argued Jeffery Noble, who saw an early draft of the full report. "Data from public interest groups, academic researchers, and transparency bombers often contradict the official claims. But these unofficial groups seem to have little legitimacy in the eyes of the public, too."
Noble worries that, without a broadly-accepted information source about changing energy issues, the public will be more easily taken in by frauds and scams.