Global warming, poverty, and hunger – do we care about the global health issues of sustainability? [ Manuscript]

It is widely accepted in the scientific community, the international political community, and among the global “policy wonks” that issues of sustainability, including global warming, poverty and hunger are the major concerns for the 21 st Century. To translate those concerns into remedial action requires a broad base of popular support. There is survey evidence of significant popular concern; whether answering “yes” to a survey question translates into something more meaningful is harder to gauge. An alternative measure of commitment, or a genuine appreciation of the scale of the problem might be reflected in information seeking behaviour: on line searches. A review of global, google search trend data from January 2004 to February 2016 shows declining interest in major issues of global sustainability, and persistent and possibly growing fascination with celebrities, entertainment, and consumer goods. While not definitive, the trends should give the global health community and policy makers pause.There are three files:1. The manuscript as a PDF2. The data set as an RData file, with each set of trends as a separate dataframe3. The reproduction of the plot (100dpi)

科学界、国际政治界以及全球政策智囊群体已达成广泛共识：可持续发展相关议题——涵盖全球变暖、贫困与饥饿——乃是21世纪的核心关切。将此类关切转化为补救性行动，需要广泛的民众支持基础。现有调查证据表明民众对此存在显著关切；但仅凭调查问卷中选择“是”的回应，能否转化为更具实质意义的行为，则较难评估。另一种衡量公众承诺程度或对问题规模真实认知的指标，或许可从信息搜索行为——即在线搜索——中得以体现。对2004年1月至2016年2月的全球谷歌（Google）搜索趋势数据的复盘显示，公众对全球可持续发展重大议题的兴趣呈下降态势，而对名人、娱乐内容与消费品的关注度则持续不减，且可能愈发浓厚。尽管上述趋势并非定论，但仍应促使全球卫生领域从业者与政策制定者审慎反思。本次公开资源包含三份文件：1. 以PDF格式呈现的研究手稿；2. 以RData格式存储的数据集，其中每组趋势数据均独立封装为一个数据框（dataframe）；3. 分辨率为100dpi的绘图复制品。