Leadership

60% want to speed up or continue at the current pace in efforts to  reach net zero. 

People are more than twice as likely to think politicians should speed up than slow down efforts to reach net zero. 

Likelihood to vote for imaginary political parties based on net zero pledges (Data: More in Common, January 2024)

A majority believes political parties should agree on a cross-party approach to tackling climate change because the issue should sit above short-term politics. 

Attitudes towards party-specific or cross-party approaches to tackling climate change (Data: More in Common, January 2024)

People across income levels believe reaching net zero will be good for the UK as a whole, for all nations and regions.

Broadly speaking, people on lower incomes are more likely to be worried that they will be unfairly hit by the costs of transition – and they want government to take this seriously.

We asked people how they feel about the UK government spending billions of pounds to expand renewable energy. The average sentiment when asked this question was positive; 6.1 out of a possible 10. 

We also asked people to describe, in one or two of their own words, how they’d feel if a party pledged significant spending on climate and environment initiatives in the lead up to the next General Election. Of the words people chose:

• 50% were positive words 
• 27% were neutral words
• 23% were negative words

By far the most common word we heard back was ‘happy’ – it made up 10% of the hundreds of words we heard from people.

Word cloud of open-text responses describing how respondents would feel if a party pledged significant spending on climate and environment initiatives in the lead up to the next election. Larger words were mentioned more often. (Data: More in Common, January 2024)

Only 14% believe the current UK government has done a good job at tackling climate change, although nearly half of us don’t have a strong opinion or don’t know. This perception is consistent with a wider disillusionment with the government, and with politics and politicians more generally. 

Slightly more people – 20% – believe the UK government has done a good job of encouraging other countries to take action on climate change.

Perception of government performance in various climate actions it can take (Data: More in Common, January 2024)

Only the Labour Party and the Green Party attract more approval than disapproval on their approach to tackling climate change and environmental issues. 

Approval (or otherwise) of political parties is strongly connected to how fair people believe their overall approach to be.

For most people this is based on a general sense, rather than a detailed assessment of the policies being proposed. Most people do not closely track policies and it takes a lot for a party’s climate offer to cut through. The default assumption currently is that most political parties are not offering up a fair approach to tackling climate change – or at least not one that most people have noticed.

At the moment, a large majority feel overlooked and uninformed about changes that will affect them directly. This matters, and has the potential to derail support and trust.

It is vital that leaders communicate more clearly and effectively, providing information and consulting people meaningfully.  This means ensuring that communication actually reaches and engages many more people, and leaves people with a greater understanding of proposed and actual policy changes, and the ways they will impact them.

Perceived level of action taken by the UK or local government to inform and consult citizens on new policies and technologies to transition away from fossil fuels (More in Common, January 2024)