More people care about climate change than you think

PEOPLE across the world, and the political spectrum, underestimate levels of support for climate action.

This “perception gap” matters. Governments will change policies if they think they have strong public backing.

Companies need to know that consumers want to see lowcarbon products and changes in business practices.

We are all more likely to make changes if we think others will do the same.

If governments, companies, innovators and our neighbours know that most people are worried about climate and want to see change, they will be more willing to drive it.

On the flip side, if we systematically underestimate widespread support, we will keep quiet for fear of “rocking the boat”.

This matters not only within each country, but also in how we co-operate internationally.

No country can solve climate change challenges on its own. If we think that people in other countries do not care and will not act, we are more likely to sit back as we consider our efforts hopeless.

Support for climate action is high across the world

Surveys can produce unreliable — even conflicting — results depending on the population sample, what questions are asked, and the framing, so I have looked at several reputable sources to see how they compare.

While the figures vary a bit depending on the specific question asked, the results are pretty consistent.

In a recent paper published in Science journal, Madalina Vlasceanu and colleagues surveyed 59 000 people across 63 countries. “Belief” in climate change was 86%.

Here, “belief” was measured based on answers to questions about whether action was necessary to avoid a global catastrophe, whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a serious threat to humanity and whether it was a global emergency.

People think climate change is a serious threat, and humans are the cause.

Concern was high across countries: Even in the country with the lowest agreement, 73% agreed.

The majority also supported climate policies, with an average global score of 72%.

“Policy support” was measured across nine interventions, including carbon taxes on fossil fuels, expanding public transport, more renewable energy, more electric car chargers, taxes on airlines and protecting forests.

In the country with the lowest support, there was still a majority (59%) who supported these policies.

These scores are high considering the wide range of policies suggested.

Another recent paper published in Nature Climate

Change found similarly high support for political change.

Peter Andre et al (2024) surveyed almost 130 000 individuals across 125 countries.

Some 89% wanted to see more political action. 86% think people in their country “should try to fight global warming” (explore the data).

And 69% said they would be willing to contribute at least 1% of their income to tackle climate change. We will look at this “willingness to pay” later.

To ensure these results were not outliers, I looked at several other studies in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Between 70% and 83% of Americans answered “yes” to a range of surveys focused on whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a concern, and a threat to humanity.

In the United Kingdom, the share which agreed was between 73% and 90%.

The fact that the majority of people “believe” in climate change and think it’s a problem is consistent across studies.

Most of us systematically underestimate how widespread support for climate action is.

We see evidence for this in the study by Andre et al (2024) we have already looked at. It asked people if they are willing to give 1% of their income to tackle climate change. Across the 125-country sample, 69% said “yes”.

They then asked the same participants what share of others in their country would say “yes” to the same question. The average across countries was just 43%.

This was not just the case in some countries; it was the case in every country. More people in our country care about this issue than we think.

One interesting observation is that populations in low- and middle-income countries are more willing to pay than in rich countries.

At least 83% of those in Bangladesh said yes, compared to 48% in the UK or the US. This might reflect levels of climate risk: if your livelihood is at risk from climate-related disasters, then you are more willing to give up part of your income.

This feeling of threat might be less salient in richer, more temperate countries.