Peter Kellner: Climate Change a Low Priority for Most Britains

This post first appeared on my colleague Peter Kellner’s YouGov blog.

YouGov has conducted a detailed survey, for the Left Foot Forward website, on British attitudes to climate change, as world leaders prepared to go to Copenhagen for the final, crucial days of the climate change summit. Our results suggest a mounting reluctance for Britain to take tough, immediate action to help avert global warming – a trend can be reversed in the near future only if a binding agreement is reached at Copenhagen; and even then, the public will need to be persuaded that other countries will deliver on their side of the bargain.

These are the key findings:

• Climate change remains a low priority – and has not climbed the league table despite the wide media coverage of the issue in the past few weeks. Even among the 24% who say it’s a “big and urgent issue: radical steps need to be taken”, only 45% say is among the top issues facing the country, and 36% say is among the top issues facing them personally.
• The number thinking it’s a big issue needing radical measures has fallen in the past four years from 38% to 24%.
• Scepticism about the willingness of Russia, China and India to implement any deal, already high four years ago, is even higher now: only 17% think they would implement any agreed measures.
• In contrast, faith in the US is up, though still not high: four years ago (i.e. during the Bush presidency) 24% thought they would implement agreed measures. Now, in the Obama era, the figure is up, but only to 34%.
• There has been a sharp drop in the number thinking Britain should take a lead in fighting global warming, from 49 to 36%. The numbers thinking that there is no point in the UK taking radical action until other countries also agree to take tough measures, is up from 45 to 56%.
• However, if there is a deal at Copenhagen, the willingness of people to accept higher motoring and flying costs goes up, from 26% (when the same qn is asked with no reference to Copenhagen) to 39%, while the  number opposed to higher costs falls from 64% to 46%. Note that Tory voters are far less willing than Lab or LD voters to paty more.
• But there IS majority support for the government to spend more on renewable energy.

In short, the public have not been sold on tough action; a deal at Copenhagen is a necessary condition for winning over the public – but a far from sufficient condition.