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 PDF
2. The data set as an RData file, with each set of trends as a separate dataframe
3. The reproduction of the plot (100dpi)