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Climate Barometer’s Adam Corner created a short video talking about perception gaps, in collaboration with ‘Need to Know UK and VideoRev.
People want climate action so why don't politicians get it?
@AJCorner from Climate Barometer explains. #ClimateAction pic.twitter.com/yDtL0j3rsU— Need To Know (@needtoknow_uk) February 22, 2024
In the past 6 months, both the Conservatives and Labour have reduced their green policy ambitions. First, the Conservatives announced delays to some near-term net zero targets. more recently, Labour said it would no longer be investing £28 billion per year into green projects. Across this period, polls have indicated that voters expect leadership from politicians on climate change, and want more (rather than less) action on climate.
New polling from Redfield & Wilton (in the wake of these announcements) asked voters for the two main parties to select between a number of competing statements, across a range of topics.
Conservative voters are more likely to believe that the threat of climate change is not being taken seriously (66%) than they are to believe that the threat of climate change to the UK has been overstated (34%). For Labour voters, a full 77% believe climate change is not being taken seriously enough, with only 23% seeing the risk to the UK as overstated.
A new survey of nearly 130,000 people across 125 countries has found that there is widespread support for climate action around the world. But, people often don’t realise how much support there is.
The open access article, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, presents new, large-scale evidence of a global mandate for climate action, while shining a light on the pervasiveness of climate ‘perception gaps’. The headline findings across the global dataset show that:
However, this ‘actual’ support for climate action was at a mismatch with what people ‘perceived’ the levels of support to be. Around the world, people “systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act”.
And these discrepancies matter. If we don’t believe there’s a mandate for green policies, inertia slows the pace of the green transition. ‘Perception gaps’ like these have consequences.
Using an AI-supported analysis of climate change content on Youtube (going back to 2018), a report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate makes a distinction between ‘old denial’ narratives (e.g. that global temperatures aren’t increasing), and ‘new denial’ narratives (e.g. that rising global temperatures can in fact be beneficial). Whilst ‘old denial’ narratives are now less common, ‘new denial’ narratives have increased and now constitute 70% of climate denial content on Youtube in 2023.
Strikingly, in a nationally representative survey of young people in the UK, 31% of respondents aged 13-17 agreed that ‘Climate change and its effects are being purposefully over-exaggerated’, rising to 37% among teenagers who were heavy users of social media.
This stands in contrast with Climate Barometer tracker data, where the claim that climate change is exaggerated was unpopular among young people aged 18-24 (a slightly older age group), perhaps indicating a pivot between earlier and later teenage years on susceptibility to this form of ‘new denial’ narrative. Alternatively, it may be a cohort effect that hasn’t been obvious because the majority of polling focuses on those aged 18 and over.
Content which is critical of clean energy solutions, seeking to discredit them or draw attention to the financial costs of green policies, was included in the ‘new denial’ category. An analysis of newspaper editorials in 2023 by Carbon Brief found a record number of UK newspaper editorials opposing climate action (almost exclusively from right-leaning titles) utilising very similar arguments.
An analysis by the website Carbon Brief has found a record number of editorials in UK newspapers (almost exclusively right-leaning publications) that oppose climate action. Carbon Brief writes:
Newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail published 42 editorials in 2023 arguing against climate action – nearly three times more than they have printed before in a single year. They called for delays to UK bans on the sale of fossil fuel-powered cars and boilers, as well as for more oil-and-gas production in the North Sea. In response to such demands, prime minister Rishi Sunak performed a “U-turn” in September on some of his government’s major net-zero policies.
Climate Barometer tracker data suggests a correspondence (cause and effect is harder to establish) between the views of Conservative MPs on net zero policies, and the views expressed in these editorials. But among the public there is not such a clear relationship, with even Conservative voters ambivalent on whether delays to net zero targets are in touch, or out of touch with public sentiment:
Opposition to climate policies is not only found in right-leaning editorials, however. An analysis by the the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found a surge in what they call ‘new denial’ narratives on Youtube in 2023. These include attempts to discredit green energy technologies, or exaggerate their cost – positions that mirror the editorial content analysed by Carbon Brief.
Writing for Labour List, More in Common’s Luke Tryl sets out why there is a chance to increase support among crucial ‘Red Wall’ voters (represented by the Loyal Nationals audience in More in Common’s Britain’s Choice model), arguing that:
Perhaps the area with the greatest potential lies in Labour’s green prosperity plan. Public support for the plan is high at 57%, rising to 61% among loyal national voters and a mammoth 84% among the group of voters who opted for the Conservatives in 2019 but who are now voting Labour.
Coupled with Public First polling showing that delaying net zero whilst failing to tax oil and gas companies is a vote loser, there is clearly a space for making a bolder, fair pitch to the electorate on green policies: consistent political leadership is an essential piece of the puzzle for building public support for the specifics of the transition.
The political mandate for climate action has strengthened over the past five years according to a report led by the Climate Citizens research group at Lancaster University. But the same report also notes there’s a belief among some MPs that climate concern is concentrated among middle-class and wealthier voters. One MP interviewed for the report said:
If you’re struggling you’re not going to be thinking ‘has COP26 been of success or not?’ They don’t give a damn about offshore, onshore wind, that’s completely irrelevant to their lives.
In fact, resources like Britain Talks Climate show climate change is important across social groups. And typically, the ‘loud minorities’ who oppose renewable energy projects are likely to be over-represented among wealthier constituents.
Our Climate Barometer tracker data shows that MPs underestimate the salience of the environment for voters relative to other issues.
Making sense of UK polarisation on climate change
The UK has (so far) avoided the sort of stark polarisation seen in nations like the US and Australia. But the country has its own particular story to tell on polarisation and climate change.