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The latest Climate Barometer tracker data compares the actions that the public and MPs say they are taking to address climate change in their personal lives.
The most frequent behaviours include: Recycling and reducing plastic use, reducing electricity use, and buying local foods and reducing food waste
The least frequent behaviours include: becoming vegan, installing heat pumps, carbon offsetting when flying, and installing solar panels
MPs are more likely to take part in actions like walking/cycling or taking public transport to work, driving an electric vehicle, as well as buying local foods and choosing environmentally friendly brands (likely due to MPs being part of a subset of the population who are wealthier).
There’s a similar trend for household behaviours, where MPs are more likely to have improved their home insulation, and switched to renewable energy. However, this does not carry through to all areas: MPs have not installed solar panels or a heat pump in greater numbers than the public. MPs are understandably more likely to have contacted MPs about climate change than the public.
Around 17% of both MPs and the public say they have taken none of these actions for environmental reasons.
New research has revealed that politicians visibly ‘leading by example’ can substantially increase the willingness of members of the UK public to adopt further low-carbon lifestyle changes.
The study looked at over a thousand people’s responses to the examples of ‘high-profile individuals’ in a nationally representative survey. It found that the vast majority (86%) wanted to see politicians, celebrities and business leaders setting a good example in terms of their climate actions. Citizens were also more willing to adopt low-carbon actions, such as flying less, eating less meat, or driving an electric car if they saw leaders doing the same. At the same time, people’s overall approval of leaders who were setting a strong example improved.
Despite this, further investigation showed that politicians may currently be reluctant to publicise their personal climate-friendly actions due to fear of criticism for virtue signaling, or hypocrisy.
Together the work suggests that rather than pulling off ‘green stunts’, politicians’ consistency of action over time is crucial, and it can also be beneficial if they acknowledge that some changes may be too difficult or costly for everyone to make (such as buying an electric car or installing a heat pump).
Researchers at the centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) have found widespread public support for low-carbon lifestyles. In workshops, people explored visions of an ideal 1.5°C future:
However, common ‘narratives of delay’ also punctuated these positive visions, stemming from what the authors identified as three emotional defense mechanisms:
1) Overconfidence in current actions (thinking that small changes have more impact than they actually do)
2) Defensiveness over radical change (despite many lifestyle changes requiring only moderate adjustments for many)
3) Dejection at the scale of the challenge (with fatalism acting as a demotivator for making lifestyle changes)
The paper concludes that:
“Rethinking strategies for public engagement with climate action will be an essential step towards creating a positive, ambitious, fair, sustainable vision of the future that is desperately needed as part of a people-centred approach to tackling climate change”
Surveys are clear that the British public supports the country’s net zero targets.
When surveys focus on specific policies (like low traffic neighbourhoods, for example), then a range of wider considerations come into play, and unsurprisingly, support for individual policies like this tends to be lower than support for net zero overall. Although, as Climate Barometer tracker data underscores, even this policy (presented as divisive in media commentary) has more support than opposition.
And this trend – of most net zero policies having greater support than opposition – is reflected in a new Ipsos survey.
In nationally representative polling from April 2024, just before the General Election was called, Ipsos reported that:
Support is highest for giving people more assistance to increase the energy efficiency of their homes (76%); frequent flyer levies (62%); and changing product pricing to reflect how environmentally friendly products are (56%).
The least popular policy tested (an exception to the rule of support outweighing opposition) was electric vehicle subsidies (39% support, 41% oppose).
However, while most net zero policies continue to enjoy majority support among Britons, Ipsos report that this support has fallen over the past two years:
Support for ensuring access to sustainable pension funds and increasing vegetarian/vegan options in food provisioning have both fallen by 8 points since 2022, support for creating low traffic neighbourhoods is down 7 points, and support for higher taxes on red meat and dairy products and electric vehicle subsidies are both down 6 ppts.
Labour and Lib Dem 2019 voters support all policies, while past Conservative voters only support a few: frequent flyer levies, changing product pricing, ensuring access to sustainable pensions, and enabling people to make energy efficiency improvements to their home.
The polling also suggested a softening of the intensity with which people report feeling worried about climate change (likely a reflection of the difficulty of maintaining a strong sense of worry about an issue that can’t be resolved in the short term), although Ipsos reported that overall levels of concern remained very high,