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In polling by Omnisis for Desmog, a number of questions were asked about public support for low traffic neighbourhoods, and the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) specifically.
Notably, the questions carefully explained to survey respondents the details of congestion zone charging – i.e. that only a minority of vehicles were affected.
The survey found support for policies that selectively impose charges on more polluting vehicles, but also evidence of confusion about how many vehicles were impacted by the ULEZ expansion to Greater London (perhaps linked to online misinformation).
Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch writing on X (formerly Twitter) reported that:
The British public is much more supportive and united on Net Zero policies than the public in peer countries, with Conservative voters frequently as green as the centre-left elsewhere
Conservative voters are marginally more likely to be opposed than to support – but there is broad support for lowering urban speed limits from 30 to 20mph across the survey sample as a whole.
Although lower speed limits are typically advocated for on road-safety grounds, they also tend to improve air quality and so are typically also part of the package of measures that comprised clean air zones.
A new report from the think tank Onward Power to the People argues that proposals for local renewable energy projects are much more likely to receive support if they provide community benefits to the local area.
Of the rural voters surveyed for the report, 43% of rural voters would already support local renewable energy projects without any community benefit. But an additional 37% would support development if they came with community benefits.
Polling of SNP voters by the campaign group Stop Cambo found that 70% agree that the UK should ‘get off oil and gas as quickly as possible’ by ramping up efforts to improve energy efficiency and developing lots more renewable energy.
In an example of the ambiguity that phrases like ‘as quickly as possible’ can sometimes mask, though, whilst 45% supported a ban on new exploration for oil and gas, almost the same number (39%) did not. Overwhelming support for greater investment in renewables among the public does not directly correlate with increasing opposition to oil and gas extraction.
There is, though, widespread support for ensuring communities are ready and able to benefit from the transition away from oil and gas (62%) and that workers are given more assistance in the transition to green jobs (86%).
This YouGov tracker shows that support for government spending to develop solar power is consistently high (around 70-80%), and opposition is low (between 8-11%).
Banks and GP surgeries are the most desired amenities that are currently not available within 15 minutes walk for Britons, according to YouGov polling in March 2023.
Whilst the concept of 15 minute neighbourhoods has become the focus of online conspiracy theories, and protests have taken place in some cities around the country, it is not yet clear how widespread this opposition is among the general public.
This survey would suggest that opposition to 15 minute neighbourhoods – when it is explained to survey respondents what the they mean – is limited.
The Labour Climate & Environment Forum tested video clips of senior Labour figures, including Kier Starmer, talking about climate change. In findings that suggest there is space/an opportunity for a much clearer and bolder offer to voters on climate change, the authors report that:
Of people who saw Keir Starmer talking about climate, 53% said they intended to vote Labour compared to 47% who saw Starmer talking about a different issue and 45% who saw no video at all. Those who saw Starmer talking on climate were more likely to think that Labour is the best party on the economy by an increase in five and twelve percentage points compared with the no-climate video and no video respectively.
According to a poll commissioned by the British Red Cross, four in five people (81%) don’t know where to get information on floods from, and one-in-seven people were aware of what actions to take in response to a flood. This is despite nearly 2 million people across the UK currently live in areas at significant risk of flooding – a number that could double by the 2050s.
Polling by Omnisis around the time of COP27 in Egypt found that 53% of people in the UK did not think the event would do anything to speed up international action on climate change. Only 29% felt that it would speed up action.
In the wake of uncertainty about whether new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would attend in person, discussion in the Conservative leadership election of rowing back on net zero commitments, and perhaps reflecting the dominance of protest coverage at COP26 (which challenged the legitimacy of COP negotiations), cynicism about the value of UN conferences seems to have increased from the relatively optimistic perspectives captured during COP26 in Glasgow.
According to polling by Omnisis, less than a quarter of the UK public (24%) think Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is showing leadership on climate change, in the context of hesitation around attendance at COP27.
This stands in contrast with the desire held by most Britons for the UK to show climate leadership and be one of the most ambitious countries in the world on climate change.
The same survey found broad support for the government funding climate action in less wealthy nations overseas.
When asked “Does the UK have a responsibility to fund climate action in poorer nations now suffering from climate-related extreme weather disasters?”, 49% said yes, while 31% said no. 29% say they did not know.
This aligns with data from our Climate Barometer tracker, which shows high levels of support for wealthy nations providing compensation to poorer countries for damages caused by the climate crisis.
In a poll of 34 countries, Britons are the most supportive of government subsidies for renewables, with 65% in favour. However, higher taxes on gas and oil were nowhere near as popular, likely reflecting ongoing concerns about the cost of living, and an illustration of the nuanced views that the public holds on phasing out oil and gas.
Polling by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has found that three in four adults (74%) reported feeling ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ worried about climate change – similar to the percentage who said they felt worried (75%) the year before, in 2021.
Just 1 in 10 people (9%) felt ‘unworried’ (somewhat unworried or not at all worried) about climate change, and around one in five (17%) said they were neither worried nor unworried.
The most frequently reported reason among those who were unworried or neither worried nor unworried about climate change was feeling that ‘there are more urgent priorities to be worried about’ (55%, up from 34% the prior year).
YouGov’s biannual tracker of support for various forms of energy generation shows that wind and solar have had the highest support since 2019, with nuclear overtaking solar in recent years. Coal and gas receive consistently low support over time.
Methodology Note: These percentages are lower than other surveys that measure support for different forms of energy generation individually. This survey requires that people choose one out of all options, rather than asking people outright whether they support any particular energy generation source.
Using a Randomised Control Trial methodology, 10 different narratives, framed around different themes, were tested in an online survey. A narrative emphasising the proximity of climate impacts was one of the best performing, especially in terms of increasing the ‘salience’ of climate change as an issue. The narrative included content emphasising:
All over the world, climate change is already leading to dangerous weather events. Scientists agree that things will get worse if we don’t take action. In the UK, we could see coastal towns submerged by rising sea levels. Heat waves that threaten our food supply; flash floods which cause destruction on a scale never seen before. We still have time. But we simply have to change now if we want to protect our way of life for the future.
The report argues that rather than focus on the so-called ‘co-benefits’ of climate action (e.g. green jobs) it is more effective to frame messages around the threat of climate impacts (as well as protecting future generations and showing global leadership).
Polling by Ipsos shows that people are much more likely to support (62%) than oppose (17%) a policy that changes product pricing based on how environmentally friendly a product is.
In addition, people were also more likely to support (47%) than oppose (32%) taxes on red meat and dairy products in principle, although this trend did not remain when personal lifestyle and financial impacts were highlighted.
Another popular policy was increasing vegetarian/vegan options in public food provisioning (56% support versus 21% oppose), which remained popular when lifestyle trade-offs were highlighted but not when financial trade-offs were highlighted.
However, a majority of respondents did not feel confident that increasing vegetarian/vegan provisioning would lead to fair outcomes across different groups of the population.
Overall, support for policies varied across groups to some extent – with wealthy people and those with left-leaning political views more likely to be supportive of diet related climate policies.