Data from a Climate Barometer & Flooded People survey carried out in March-April 2026 shows how politics plays a clear role in reported experience of heat, drought and wildfires amongst the UK public.
Green (59%), Plaid (55%) and Labour backers (54%) were the most likely to report personal experience of heatwaves/extreme heat, while Liberal Democrats were the most likely to say they have experienced drought and water scarcity (18%).
Plaid Cymru backers were the most likely to highlight an experience of wildfires – even ahead of this summer’s ‘firewave‘, which saw a number of major fires across Wales. They are followed by SNP backers (11%) showing how geography likely plays a role here too.
Yet Reform UK backers are the ones who diverge the most – just 32% report experience of heatwaves and extreme heat – and just 3% say they have experienced wildfires.
More than 40,000 extra people died on England’s hottest days between 1988 and 2025 compared with what would be expected in normal temperatures, according to new ONS data.
Deaths from high heat are expected to keep climbing as climate change and an ageing population combine, with older people, children and the unwell most at risk.
The strain has been visible across the health system: A&E departments saw their busiest period on record, with almost 2.5 million attendances a month in May, June and July, with record-breaking heat cited as a key factor. Nurses reported collapsing on shift amid what their union called “inhumane and impossible” conditions.
YouGov’s long-term data tracking shows an uptick in the belief that ‘the environment’ is one of the UK’s most important issues, amidst a summer of unprecedented heat, fires and drought. Although this increase does not match high points across the trend line, or the impact of summer heat episodes between 2022-2024.
The importance Britons placed on ‘the environment’ rose +11% across this summer – from 14% on the 4th May (pre-heatwaves) to a peak of 25% on the 17th of August, before dropping slightly again to 23% on the 24th of August.
These shifts have been particularly noticeable amongst Lib Dem supporters (+17%, from 23% to 40% in the same period), Labour supporters (+15%, from 22% to 37%) and women (+14%, from 15% to 29%).
This data follows a piece by YouGov published after the June summer heatwave, which suggested that the heat had not impacted people’s climate opinions or actions, despite 71% believing the heatwave was likely to have been caused by climate change.
While this certainly appeared true at the time – the latest data suggests this piece may have been premature in catching the full effects of the extreme heat on environmental salience this summer (especially when previous weather extremes have led to spikes in issue salience data).
A series of record-breaking summers has sharpened policy debates around how to cool the UK and protect people from overheating. Growing calls to prioritise a much wider rollout of air conditioning, and claims this is being blocked by net zero has prompted government sources to clarify there is no ban on AC, and Carbon Brief to state that “air-conditioning (AC) has emerged as a new front in the international “culture war” over climate action”. A similar warning was made in Climate Barometer’s commentary piece last summer.
In this context, a new commentary piece by Matthew Scott and Mehri Khosravi states that:
“the UK’s approach to tackling overheating should be based on the principles of the cooling hierarchy, not AC […] the government should resist the rush to AC, and adopt the cooling hierarchy as the foundation of overheating policy across the UK.”
The cooling hierarchy describes an approach to reducing overheating in both new and existing homes that prioritises passive cooling – such as external shading, natural ventilation, and correctly installed insulation to reduce the risk of homes overheating. This broadly aligns the perspective of Shade the UK, who – in anticipating the continued culture war this year – wrote:
“…relying on [AC] as our first or only line of defence will reduce resilience, limit our options, deepen inequality, strain our electricity grid, and trap us in a feedback loop. The hotter it gets, the more we cool; the more we cool with active systems and products, the hotter it gets.”