Environmental Safety in the Sustainable Development Goals: Public Survey

This chapter looks at three aspects of environmental safety: energy preference, air pollution, and climate change. It is divided into two parts: (1) global outlook and (2) case research. First, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015 with a fifteen-year objective of implementing them, are broken down and analyzed. Direct and indirect relations are established. Second, empirical case research from Hungary is grouped and stratified sampling is reported upon. Results indicate that renewable energy sources were shown to receive the highest score in terms of energy, while nuclear and fossil fuel power scored the lowest. The worst type of air pollution was emitted by enterprises and everyday CO₂ emission in combination with communal waste. In terms of Hungary’s climate change impacts, water-related and agricultural aspects were ranked the highest. Additional energy concerns showed cooling systems as highly consumptive. In terms of environmental safety, tests indicated women were more sensitive to the environment than men. Moreover, people with higher education levels evaluated the risks lower than those who just finished technical college. Evaluation of air pollution monotonically increased with settlement size.