The surprising rise in climate scepticism
A yearly opinion survey carried out in many countries around the world looks at attitudes to climate change and to emissions reductions.[1] Paid for by the French utility EdF, the data collection is carried out by Ipsos. In the edition that collates the results from the 2022 survey, twenty researchers - mostly French - analysed the results and provided crisp commentary.
One thing immediately stands out. Between the surveys of 2019 and 2022, most countries saw a small but definite rise in broadly defined climate scepticism. Although a large majority around the world continues to sees climate change as being caused by human activities, increasing numbers of respondents say that climate change is caused by natural causes, or they are still not sure what is causing it, or whether it exists at all.
Figure 1
Source: EdF
In the period between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, the percentage of those polled who do not think that human actions, such as burning fossil fuels, are causing climate change has risen from 31% to 37%. The numbers who ascribe it to human activities fell from 69% to 63%.
This pattern applies across the world. In France, for example, the percentage saying that human actions are not causing climate change rose from 29% to 37%. In India, the figure rose from 29% to 40%.
The result is surprising; the scientific consensus on the cause of rising temperatures and extreme weather has become almost unanimous but the numbers rejecting this judgment around the world have grown sharply in the last few years.
Does this matter? Yes. A shift to a belief that mankind is not responsible for climate change makes it easier to believe that little can be done to slow and eventually reverse the increase in temperatures. Unpopular policies to cut carbon emissions become less politically acceptable.
Is the UK seeing the same pattern?
In short, the answer is yes. The pollsters YouGov run a survey approximately every two months that asks people the following question with four potential responses:
On the subject of climate change do you think ……
· The world’s climate is changing as a result of human activity
· The world’s climate is changing but NOT as a result of human activity (capitals used in YouGov survey)
· The world’s climate is NOT changing (capitals used in YouGov survey)
· Not sure.
The survey has been run since July 2019 and the most recent one was completed a few weeks ago in September. So the data is more up-to-date than the EdF numbers.
The Ipsos worldwide survey has a sample size of 24,000 respondents. YouGov’s UK survey typically has around 1,700 respondents and so I have smoothed the British data by creating a rolling one year average of all the 6 surveys in the preceding 12 months. This means that the first data point covers the six surveys to May 2020. The final data point averages the results for the same number of surveys to September 2024.
Figure 2 shows the percentage believing that climate change is a result of human activities. The results show a rise to about 74% in the six surveys to February 2021 and then a fall to around 69% in the six surveys up to September 2024.
Figure 2
Source: YouGov.
The percentage of UK respondents seeing climate change arising from mankind’s activities has therefore fallen around 5% between 2021 and 2024. Therefore the share of the population either seeing climate change as of natural origin, not being sure of its cause or denying the existence of any climate change has risen from 26% to 31%.
The most importance cause of this rise is the number of respondents saying that climate change exists but has natural causes. Although there has been a slight fall since March 2024, the percentage has increased from about 12% in early 2021 to around 16% now.
Figure 3
Source: YouGov
The percentage recorded as ‘Not sure’ has barely shifted from 12% of the survey responses. Those stating that climate change is not happening have risen slightly in number to around 4% from a low point of 2% in early 2021. Taken together these three responses add up to the 31% of people not believing in the human origin of climate change in the average of the six surveys to September 2024.
The one year rolling average for the UK numbers shows somewhat lower levels of scepticism than the global average. (A 69%/31% split compared to the 63%/37% split in the EdF world surveys). But at around 5/6%, the decline in the percentage of respondents believing that human actions are causing climate change is similar in the UK and the global average.
Which social groups are driving this change in opinion?
The EdF global survey shows how differences in social status, education levels and political attitudes affect the level and the degree of growth in scepticism about the human cause of climate change. In general, higher income is not strongly correlated with attitudes to climate and age is a very poor predictor of opinion; those over 65 have exactly the same propensity to believe global warming is driven by the modern economy as those between 25 and 49.
Levels of income and education are more correlated with views in the world surveys. Among the better educated, climate scepticism is 10% higher than among the lesser qualified, for example. Unsurprisingly, the most powerful correlation is between the degree of concern with climate change and the views about its origin. The least worried decile has only 19% of its respondents saying climate change was caused by human action whereas the most concerned decile has 80% of respondents believing in this cause.
In the UK, in some ways the patterns are different. YouGov splits respondents by region, sex, political views, age, social status and how the person voted in the Brexit referendum.
The following table lays out by what percentage the belief in the human origin of climate change the individual groups fell in the period between the year to February 2021 and the year to September 2024.
Figure 4
Source: YouGov
This table makes clear that the decline in the belief in the scientific consensus on climate change is particularly concentrated among older Conservative voters who cast their ballot in 2016 to leave the EU. These groups were already more sceptical and so the differences, for example, between Conservative and Labour voters, for example, have widened.
On average, non-believers in climate change from human actions fell by 5% between the year to February 2021 and the year to September 2024. However Leave voters fully believing in climate change reduced by 9% from 64% to 55% and Conservative voters (many of whom will also have been Leave supporters) saw an equivalent decline. Leave voters now barely include a majority who blame human actions for climate change.
By contrast, Remainer voters barely changed their core opinion on climate change and 85% still see the human origin of global warming. The gap between this percentage and the percentage of Leavers with the same opinion has risen from 22% to 30%.
Wealthier people in classes ABC1 do have a lower degree of climate scepticism but the gap between this group and those in the C2DE group has not widened. Similarly, males are consistently less convinced about human origin of global warming than females but both groups saw a reduction of about 5% in the percentage declaring this opinion.
Conclusion
Despite the increasing evidence of dangerous climate change, the percentage of global, and UK, respondents thinking this arises from mankind’s actions has fallen substantially in recent years. In the UK, the change in attitude is principally found among survey respondents of the political right, particularly those older people who voted to leave the European Union.