Climate Barometer Tracker

Climate Barometer tracker data shows that over the past year, the number of people who agree that ‘people who campaign on climate issues are ‘out of touch’ with the rest of the country’ has increased (from 29% to 37%), while fewer people disagree (from 43% to 34%). Overall, the public is remains split: similar numbers are also unsure (30%).

This division reflects the tension at the heart of climate activism: how to challenge the status quo whilst avoiding alienating the people who, ultimately, campaigners aim to ‘win over’.

In terms of the impacts of extreme weather and climate change-related effects, the public is primarily concerned about: harm towards nature and wildlife, suffering and hardship for the world’s poorest, that their bills and costs may rise, and that some food will become unavailable.

The public tend to see less connection between extreme weather and climate change and the effect on their physical and mental health, or ability to spend time outdoors or travel. Only 12% said they were worried climate change and extreme weather would lead to damage to their home.

Climate Barometer data shows that while overall only around 16% of the public say they are worried that climate change will impact their ‘mental health and wellbeing’ over the next ten years, a closer look tells us a more nuanced story.

In line with an abundance of research showing young people have among the highest climate anxiety, the data shows a clear link between age and worry about mental health and wellbeing, with older groups much less concerned than younger groups.

Looking at the same question by income bands, those earning the least (under £5000 per year) are most likely to worry that climate change will affect their mental health and wellbeing, underscoring the connections between income, cost of living pressures,  and vulnerability to climate impacts.

According to our Climate Barometer Tracker, 48% of the public agree with the idea that “wealthy countries, with a history of high greenhouse gas emissions, should provide compensation to poorer countries for damages caused by the climate crisis”. By breaking this down by political voting behaviour, we see that the majority of this comes from Labour voters – with 65% agreeing. Of Conservative voters, 35% agree (and roughly equal numbers disagree) with the statement.

MPs, however, show a starker contrast, with Labour MPs in majority agreement (61%) and Conservative MPs in majority disagreement (58%).

Climate Barometer tracker data shows that there is significantly more support than opposition for ending fracking in the UK.

A closer look reveals further details: by splitting the data according to party political support, there is a more equal division among Conservative voters on whether the UK should end fracking.

But opposition to ending fracking is particularly high among Conservative MPs (55%). This stands in stark contrast with Labour MPs, 85% of whom support ending fracking. This makes fracking one of the most polarising aspects of the energy system among MPs – on many other issues (insulation, solar, offshore wind) there is much less difference between the representatives of different political parties.

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.

Climate Barometer Tracker data over three waves shows clear patterns and differences in MP and public opinion about different forms of energy sources. MPs and the public share roughly the same opinion of solar power and coal, the former seeing consistently high support and the latter seeing consistently low support. And while MPs tend to overestimate public backlash to onshore wind, we see here that the public are actually more supportive of onshore wind than MPs.

There are a few areas in which public support is lower than that of MPs: nuclear energy, oil, gas, and hydroelectric dams. Support for blue and green hydrogen is also considerably lower, but likely due to low public knowledge about these sources of energy.

Climate Barometer tracker data shows that the public, and strikingly MPs, do not put the political party they voted for in the top three most trusted sources to speak on the subject of climate change.

In the public data, only 2% selected this option, including only 1% of Conservative voters.

For MPs, the figure is higher at 14%, but hardly a ringing endorsement.

Because of the way the question was asked, sources with the ‘credentials’ to speak on climate change are likely to have been preferentially selected. However, the fact that the voters for (and political representatives of) their own political parties don’t see themselves as being trusted on climate suggests there is a space in the national political discourse for credible, climate-literate politicians.

The top three trusted messengers for MPs are:

1) Academics, 2) Naturalists such as David Attenborough and Chris Packham, and 3) The Climate Change Committee.

The top three trusted messengers for the public are:

1) Scientists, 2) Naturalists such as David Attenborough and Chris Packham, and 3) None of the above.

Climate Barometer tracker data shows that trust in climate charities, NGOs and activists to speak honestly about climate change varies for both the public and MPs. In general, naturalists such as David Attenborough and Chris Packham are trusted more than other groups, although this does not hold for Conservative MPs. 

Nature conservation charities such as WWF and RSPB, and climate charities such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace tend to be more trusted across the political spectrum than climate activists like Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate, and activist groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Notably, the latter two groups were not selected by any MPs as groups that they trusted to speak honestly about climate change.

Both MPs and the public believe the UK should be one of the most ambitious countries in the world when it comes to addressing climate change, regardless of what other countries are doing, with slightly higher support among MPs. Only a minority say that the UK should not take steps to address climate change until other bigger countries like the US and China agree to do the same.

Questions like this help to position the way in which the ‘wind is blowing’ on the UK’s international climate efforts – its important that large numbers of people are not disagreeing with the principle of high ambition. At the same time, endorsements like this can’t readily be translated into specific commitments at international negotiations, where the geopolitics of negotiating blocs, with very different priorities and perspectives, takes centre stage.

According to our tracker data, both MPs and the public show substantial levels of support for helping poor and vulnerable countries respond to climate change, with consistently higher proportions of MPs supporting this policy. Public support is slightly higher now (41%) a year on from when we first asked about this (36%) in October 2022. However, there has been a notable downward trend in MPs support across that period too.

Climate Barometer tracker data across three waves (October 2022 – October 2023) shows high levels of MP support for solar and offshore wind energy. MPs have very high levels of support for offshore wind, but typically have less favourable attitudes towards onshore wind than the public (though this gap may be starting to close).

Across all regions of the UK, people’s support for the construction of a new solar park in their area is overwhelming high (typically over three quarters support), and opposition is low (10% or less). Yet both the public and MPs tend to underestimate support, and overestimate opposition. This figure shows three waves of Climate Barometer polling of the public, between October 2022 to October 2023.

Despite the overwhelming support from the public for the construction of a new solar park in their area, when asked if “other people” would support the new development, even the public underestimates support – and overestimates opposition. While support has hovered around 80% in favour, much lower numbers (39-45%) believe that, in their area, others support, than oppose a new solar farm.

Even so, the public’s guess is closer than MPs: only around 30% tend to believe that in their constituency, “more would support than oppose” a new solar farm.

Wider research suggests that a ‘quiet majority’ effect may explain why people think there is more opposition than there really is to solar energy. In focus groups, More in Common found that many people expressed a reluctance to voice their (majority) support for green energy developments, for fear of seeming confrontational in the face of louder (but minority) opposition.

Played out in community after community, this hesitation to articulate support for solar and other forms of green energy is likely to be creating a false sense of where public opinion really sits.

Climate Barometer tracker data from shows that the majority of the public (70%) and MPs (76%) agree “we can succeed in reducing the negative impacts of climate change by working together and acting collectively”. While not policy specific, this sentiment shows that both the public and MPs highly value the principle of cooperating together to tackle the climate crisis, with clear relevance to the aims and process of international negotiations.

The latest Barometer tracker data (October 2023) shows public support for low traffic neighbourhoods is higher than opposition, although the difference is only 10 percentage points, and the pattern is reversed for Conservative voters.

Public support (39%) is higher than that of MPs at only 23%, and support is particularly low among Conservative MPs, likely reflecting the widespread belief that the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was the reason for the unexpected Conservative ‘hold’ at the Uxbridge by-election in July 2023.

As with differences between public and MP opinion seen on onshore wind, and to a lesser extent solar power, it is important that where public support exists (as it does on onshore wind, solar and clean air zones), this support is seen, acknowledged and acted on by political representatives.

Three waves of Climate Barometer tracker data show that there is no evidence of polarisation among the public or among MPs in terms of support for the 2050 net zero target. This is important in the context of the shifts in the discourse on net zero in 2023 (driven by the announcement of delays to some nearer-term net zero targets) by the Conservative government.

In the figure below, there is majority support among Conservative and Labour voters and Conservative and Labour MPs (Conservative and Labour voters are defined by the party they voted for in the 2019 General Election).

In the figure below, despite the widespread support for net zero among both MPs and the public across party lines, MPs from both major political parties tend to underestimate levels of public support. Only 28% of MPs (27% of Conservative MPs and 24% of Labour MPs) correctly guessed between 60-71%.