UK climate change attitudes unchanged by heatwave - EUROPE SAYS
Similarly, separate data on the number of people saying “the environment” is a top issue facing the country has remained stalwart, at 18% this week compared to 16% the week before (and having been between. . .
Similarly, separate data on the number of people saying “the environment” is a top issue facing the country has remained stalwart, at 18% this week compared to 16% the week before (and having been between 14-17% all year). This continues to place the environment behind the economy, immigration, defence, health, crime, and welfare as a top issue – and on a par with housing. What has shifted attitudes when it comes to climate change?So if the recent heatwave hasn’t shifted the public opinion dial, with Britons already convinced of the reality of climate change and that it is affecting the UK, is there anything that has?Looking again at our ‘most important issues’ tracker, which has a much greater body of data as it runs weekly and stretches back to 2011, we can see that the most acute shift in the numbers saying ‘environment’ is a top issue was in 2014, during that year’s winter storms and flooding. This saw the number saying the environment was a top issue facing the nation rising from 9% in late January to 23% in mid-February. However, the Met Officesuggested at the timethat climate change made only a secondary contribution to the flooding, and it is likely that opinion at the time related to the specific issue of mitigating the floods, rather than the wider issue of climate. A shift that is very directly climate change-related comes in spring 2019, when Extinction Rebellion dominated headlines with their protests in London. This saw the number of people picking environment as a top issue growing from 17% in mid-April to 27% by late-May. It would not return to these prior levels until 2024. The run-up to COP-26 in 2021 – which received a great deal of domestic news attention owing to the fact that the UK was hosting – also saw the environment rise on our top issues list, from 30% in mid-October to 40% in early November. Tags:Climateclimate changeglobal warming