Communication about climate change (for the most part) is shifting from ‘raising awareness’ to wrestling with how to deliver a transition that does right by people and places.
But have the methods we use to measure ‘success’ in terms of public engagement with climate change kept up?
In collaboration with Parlons Climat, communication specialists who track public opinion on climate change and produce public engagement resources in France, we’re asking: what does climate ‘salience’ mean in 2026?
Climate salience
Issue salience is typically measured by asking people what they think are the most important issues facing the country. This is an approach common to a wide range of pollsters, who generally ask people to pick their three top issues.
Climate Barometer and Parlons Climat also collect this data, and the story on the salience of climate change (sometimes but not always bundled into ‘the environment’) is similar in each case: climate change/the environment is lower down the list of priority issues than it used to be
Most UK trackers have it at around 15% now vs 30%+ in 2022/2023; in France the difference is more like 25% vs 40%. The economy/cost of living, health, crime and immigration are the issues that have dominated during this same period.
From the perspective of making progress on environmental policies, a drop in the salience of climate change is seen as important because:
But what if these reasons no longer hold as much weight?
What if people really do care about climate change (and especially getting the solutions to climate change right), but this isn’t captured by issue salience questions?
What if the ambition of climate policies (and public receptiveness to them) is no longer tethered to a somewhat abstract sense of where ‘climate change’ sits in a list of competing priorities?
This isn’t an argument to stop talking about climate change, or to avoid it in messaging. But on the ground, this is not what’s doing the heavy lifting when it comes to support for climate policies.
So are we ‘winning’ or ‘losing’?
During a multi-decadal transition, measures of engagement will ebb and flow.
But in 2021, levels of concern about climate change were higher than they are now. Climate change ranked higher on the list of issues people picked as their top priorities. Does that mean we’re ‘losing’?
Or is climate action at its most powerful when it stops being a cause that needs to be talked about on its own terms, and becomes something engrained in everyday life and policy making?
Here’s what Jamie Clarke, Director of Engaging Climate, had to say on this question:
“Most other societal and environmental issues that have been campaigned for are no longer ‘salient’ – and that’s for a variety of reasons that can be framed as ‘win’, ‘lose’ or ‘draw’. Those that have been ‘won’ – ranging from gay marriage to CFCs and fox hunting – have led to the adoption of policies (grounded in a broad public mandate) that mean the issue becomes less salient by virtue of being subsumed into the mainstream.
Those that are ‘lost’ – nuclear disarmament for example – have largely been abandoned. They are no longer salient because they are no longer being campaigned for in mainstream circles or discussed in the media. The issues that are ‘drawn’ – like international aid – are where policy goals and public concern are in retreat but with the potential for resuscitation.
Where climate fits is debatable – but with public concern still high and policy in place, we’re still ‘winning’, even if the race isn’t over.”
New measures of success
This is not a case for complacency. But if we agree that we are in a new phase of the transition (as Parlons Climat has argued here), then we need to update our measures of success.
It is unrealistic that people with a broad spectrum of competing priorities for their attention would keep telling pollsters that their biggest worry is climate change. And it is simplistic to argue that politicians are steered only by the ranking of their constituents’ concerns – especially on an issue as structurally significant as the decarbonisation of the society.
What climate concern looks like
Britain Talks Climate & Nature research and Parlons Climat’s yearly barometer shows unequivocally that people care about nature, green spaces, wildlife and preserving a healthy environment for future generations. The UK government’s attitude tracker for energy and climate change shows overall levels of concern about climate change increasing during 2025 (from 77% to 79%), albeit down from a high of 85% in Autumn 2021.
The numbers in France tell the same story with most trackers putting worry about climate change and the environment at around 8/10 for several years, with a (very) small decrease this year. In France, only 8% of the population want politicians to take less action on climate.
Climate Barometer data points to high levels of worry about the negative impacts climate change will have on nature, poorer communities, and household bills. There is a small/stable minority of people who don’t think the impacts of climate change will be harmful. But the number of people who say they are concerned about the risks of extreme heat has increased significantly over the past decade, and most people think we are not prepared for the risks that climate impacts pose.
Taken together, these measures do not paint a picture of an unconcerned public.
As the Canadian research team behind Re:Climate has argued, issue salience is, primarily, a measure of competition for attention – and there is plenty of competition for our attention.
The idea that people have a ‘finite pool of worry’ has been rightly challenged (climate concern stayed high, for example, throughout the Covid 19 pandemic). But it is certainly possible that people care about more than three issues at the same time (the classic ‘salience’ measure), and that some of these issues feel more immediately pressing than others.
Phases of the transition
The transition towards a decarbonised world and the campaigning required to accelerate it has come in distinct phases.
Initially (among populations fortunate enough to not already be experiencing it), there was a clear objective to raise awareness about climate change and the risks it posed. By educating people about climate change and pushing the issue of climate change up the public and political agenda, governments would be forced to confront the ‘inconvenient truth’ of rising emissions and the problems they created.
The salience of the issue, and awareness (or scepticism) about climate change were the perfect measures to track the progress of this early form of campaigning. Separated-out from the wide variety of other pressing environmental challenges, climate salience became a key indicator of the public mandate for climate action, something it was assumed politicians would find hard to ignore (even if some ignored it anyway).
In countries where the Greens were an established political party, like France, their electoral success could be taken as a proxy of the progress of the climate issue in public opinion.
And in many countries (including France and the UK), climate policies and targets covering transport emissions, clean power and land-use became law. Although they have been subject to contestation and political polarisation, they are indisputably part of contemporary politics.
The era of implementation is well underway, even if progress has been uneven: climate policies and ideas have infused public and political debate. Despite the cold language of ‘co-benefits’, climate policies are persuasive arguments for protecting energy sovereignty (renewables), improving health outcomes (insulation), and alleviating cost of living issues (the electrification of heating systems).
In France, poll after poll tells the same story. Moving past our dependence on fossil fuels is perceived as a question of independence and autonomy, more than a ‘climate’ policy. Getting pesticide free, local food at the canteen is perceived as a health policy, more than an environmental one.
Increasingly, as people interact with and benefit from ‘climate policies’, they may not be thinking about climate change. They may support those policies based on a wider rationale than the urgency of climate change. As such, climate salience might no longer be the go-to indicator to measure progress.
The real risks to the transition
There are genuine risks to progress on climate change – but climate change not leading the list of issues that people report worrying about day-to-day isn’t the most pressing one.
Upfront costs, perceived fairness, the distribution of the benefits of climate policies and trust in the institutions delivering climate policies are all much more significant influences on how the transition unfolds.
As Climate Barometer data shows, what people are weighing up when they consider proposals for energy infrastructure in their local area isn’t primarily their concern for climate change. It is the impact on local communities, and the local environment (or the benefits community ownership can bring).
This isn’t an argument to stop talking about climate change, or to avoid it in messaging. But on the ground, this is not what’s doing the heavy lifting when it comes to support for climate policies.
So are we ‘winning’ or ‘losing’?
During a multi-decadal transition, measures of engagement will ebb and flow.
But in 2021, levels of concern about climate change were higher than they are now. Climate change ranked higher on the list of issues people picked as their top priorities. Does that mean we’re ‘losing’?
Or is climate action at its most powerful when it stops being a cause that needs to be talked about on its own terms, and becomes something engrained in everyday life and policy making?
Here’s what Jamie Clarke, Director of Engaging Climate, had to say on this question:
“Most other societal and environmental issues that have been campaigned for are no longer ‘salient’ – and that’s for a variety of reasons that can be framed as ‘win’, ‘lose’ or ‘draw’. Those that have been ‘won’ – ranging from gay marriage to CFCs and fox hunting – have led to the adoption of policies (grounded in a broad public mandate) that mean the issue becomes less salient by virtue of being subsumed into the mainstream.
Those that are ‘lost’ – nuclear disarmament for example – have largely been abandoned. They are no longer salient because they are no longer being campaigned for in mainstream circles or discussed in the media. The issues that are ‘drawn’ – like international aid – are where policy goals and public concern are in retreat but with the potential for resuscitation.
Where climate fits is debatable – but with public concern still high and policy in place, we’re still ‘winning’, even if the race isn’t over.”
New measures of success
This is not a case for complacency. But if we agree that we are in a new phase of the transition (as Parlons Climat has argued here), then we need to update our measures of success.
It is unrealistic that people with a broad spectrum of competing priorities for their attention would keep telling pollsters that their biggest worry is climate change. And it is simplistic to argue that politicians are steered only by the ranking of their constituents’ concerns – especially on an issue as structurally significant as the decarbonisation of the society.
Climate change didn’t cause the culture wars, but culture wars are making climate change harder to solve.
In new research from Kings College London (KCL), divisions over climate change are seen as worse than divisions over Brexit, with the public more likely to say there is tension between climate change sceptics and believers (64%) than between Leavers and Remainers (52%), or between younger and older generations (45%).
This is despite the broad-based consensus on the importance of the issue that Climate Barometer data evidences, and which is seen consistently in wider research (e.g. the recent Britain Talks Climate & Nature report, which highlights widespread care for nature, wildlife and the benefits that the transition to clean, renewable energy can bring).
More new research (from Hope Not Hate) diving into the differences between people who intend to vote Reform highlights climate change as one of the dividing lines among a disjointed coalition of factions. ‘Squeezed Stewards’ (in an echo of More in Common’s ‘Rooted Patriots’ segment, who have high levels of threat perception around environmental risks) care about nature and acknowledge the climate crisis. But the ‘Hardline Conservatives’ subgroup of Reform backers are much more likely to be in the minority of people who reject action on climate change entirely.