Most of the world’s population wants stronger climate action. They just don’t realize that they are a majority

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Figure 26: Percentage of people per country who want their country to replace coal, oil, and gas with renewable energy, such as power from the wind or sun, from People’s Climate Vote 2024 report (below)

In the The Guardian

The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch a year-long exploration of the ‘silent majority’ of people who want to fight climate change

 

A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action.

As co-founders of a non-profit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis.

For years – and especially at this fraught political moment – most coverage of the climate crisis has been defensive. People who support climate action are implicitly told – by their elected officials, by the fossil fuel industry, by news coverage and social media discourse – that theirs is a minority, even a fringe, view.

That is not what the new research finds.

The most recent study, People’s Climate Vote 2024, was conducted by Oxford University as part of a program the UN launched after the 2015 Paris agreement. Among poorer countries, where roughly four out of five of the world’s inhabitants live, 89% of the public wanted stronger climate action. In richer, industrialized countries, roughly two out of three people wanted stronger action. Combining rich and poor populations, “80% [of people globally] want more climate action from their governments.”

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication – which, along with its partner, the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, is arguably the global gold standard in climate opinion research – has published numerous studies documenting the same point: most people, in most countries, want stronger action on the climate crisis.

A fascinating additional 89% angle was documented in a study published by Nature Climate Change, which noted that the overwhelming global majority does not know it is the majority: “[I]ndividuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act,” the report states.

In other words, an overwhelming majority of people want stronger action against climate change. But at least for now, this global climate majority is a silent majority.

Taken together, the new research turns the conventional wisdom about climate opinion on its ear. At a time when many governments and companies are stalling or retreating from rapidly phasing out the fossil fuels that are driving deadly heat, fires and floods, the fact that more than eight out of 10 human beings on the planet want their political representatives to preserve a livable future offers a much-needed ray of hope. The question is whether and how that mass sentiment might be translated into effective action.

What would it mean if this silent climate majority woke up – if its members came to understand just how many people, both in distant lands and in their own communities, think and feel like they do? How might this majority’s actions – as citizens, as consumers, as voters – change? If the current narrative in news and social media shifted from one of retreat and despair to one of self-confidence and common purpose, would people shift from being passive observers to active shapers of their shared future? If so, what kinds of climate action would they demand from their leaders?

These are the animating questions behind the 89% Project, a yearlong media initiative that launched this week. The journalistic non-profit we run, Covering Climate Now, has invited newsrooms from around the world to report, independently or together, on the climate majorities found in their communities.

Who are the people who comprise the 89%? Given that support for climate action varies by country – the figure is 74% in the US, 80% in India, 90% in Burkina Faso – does support also vary by age, gender, political affiliation and economic status? What do members of the climate majority want from their political and community leaders? What obstacles are standing in the way?

The week of coverage that started on Tuesday will be followed by months of further reporting that explores additional aspects of public opinion about climate change. If most of the climate majority have no idea they are the majority, do they also not realize that defusing the climate crisis is by no means impossible? Scientists have long said that humanity possesses the tools and knowhow necessary to limit temperature rise to the Paris agreement’s aspirational target of the 1.5C above preindustrial levels. What has been lacking is the political will to implement those tools and leave fossil fuels behind. The 89% Project will culminate in a second joint week of coverage before the Cop30 United Nations climate meeting in Brazil in November.

While it’s impossible to know how many newsrooms will participate in this week’s 89% coverage, early signs are heartening. The Guardian newspaper and the Agence France-Presse news agency have joined as lead partners of the project. Other newsrooms offering coverage include the Nation, Rolling Stone, Scientific American and Time magazines in the US; the National Observer newspaper in Canada; the Deutsche Welle global broadcaster in Germany; the Corriere della Sera newspaper in Italy; the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan; and the multinational collaborative Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism based in Jordan.

We believe the current mismatch between public will and government action amounts to a deficit in democracy. Can that deficit be addressed if the climate majority awakens to its existence? Would people elect different leaders? Buy (or not buy) different products? Would they talk differently to family, friends and co-workers about what can be done to build a cleaner, safer future?

The first step to answering such questions is to give the silent climate majority a voice. That will happen, finally, this week in news coverage around the world.

  • Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are the co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

This story is part of the 89% Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

About The 89 Percent Project

from website 89percent.org

The 89 Percent Project is a year-long global journalistic effort to explore a pivotal but little-known fact about climate change: The overwhelming majority of the world’s people — between 80 and 89%, according to recent science — want governments to take stronger action. But that fact is not reflected in our news coverage, which helps explain why the 89% don’t know that they are the global majority.

The 89 Percent Project launches on April 21 with a CCNow Joint Coverage Week focused on the people who comprise this silent climate majority: Who are they? How do their numbers vary across countries and gender and generational lines? What kinds of action do they want governments to take?

Executive Summary: The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024

The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 is the world’s largest standalone public opinion survey on climate change and the second edition of the Peoples’ Climate Vote global survey.

Over 73,000 people were surveyed in 77 countries, representing 87 percent of the world’s population, across eight months. This makes the second edition of the survey larger and more inclusive than the first edition in 2021, which covered 50 countries and 17 languages. Randomized telephone polling meant anyone with a mobile phone in any of the countries surveyed had the chance to take part.

The publication of the Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 comes at a crucial time for domestic and international climate strategies and action, capturing how people are experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis and how they want world leaders to respond.

In the last year, leading scientific bodies have warned that climate change is accelerating faster than expected. Meanwhile, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission levels continue to rise and international tensions and conflicts are likewise on the increase. Many countries endured some of the worst extreme weather events to date – from the worst recorded wildfire season in Canada’s history that covered the east coast of Northern America in smoke for weeks, to devastating floods from Storm Daniel in Greece, Bulgaria, Türkiye and Libya, to Cyclone Freddy, and the longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded that battered Mozambique and Madagascar. Every continent was impacted by extreme weather events in 2023, and vulnerable populations suffered particularly devastating consequences of these impacts, many of which are still recovering.

With more than half of the world’s population potentially voting in 2024, understanding how citizens are thinking about climate change is more important than ever.

The survey’s results can help decision-makers navigate this challenging context, and beyond, as governments begin to update their climate action plans (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) for submission in 2025 – which also marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Ahead of the UNFCCC climate conference, COP30, in 2025, countries will use NDCs to outline and communicate their pathways for climate action in line with the Paris Agreement. At COP29

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in November 2024, governments will gather to discuss raising climate ambition, new climate finance commitments, and support needed to define and achieve updated NDCs.

The Peoples’ Climate Vote was launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to connect people with policymakers.

Its purpose is to provide leaders with reliable information on what millions of people around the world think and feel about the climate emergency and actions they want world leaders to take.

The survey, conducted by GeoPoll on behalf of UNDP, was then collated and processed by analysts at the University of Oxford, who weighted the data to create representative estimates of public opinion. With such a large sample size, and rich socio-demographic information, the country-level estimates quoted above have margins of error no larger than + or – 3 percentage points. The margin of error for SIDS and some regions is + or -1, and even lower for big regions and global estimates.

The major findings of The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 are presented in four sections: The Peoples’ Perspective shares findings on the lived experience of climate change, such as how climate change impacts people’s daily lives. The Peoples’ Stocktake shows how people perceive climate action already being undertaken. The third section, Peoples’ Priorities, highlights what climate action people want their countries to take. The final section, Peoples’ Call for Collaboration, outlines how people want countries to work together on climate.

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The Peoples’ Perspective

• People are increasingly worried about climate change. Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and climate impacts, a majority of people globally, and in 80 percent of the countries surveyed, are becoming more worried about climate change. The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 found over half (53 percent) of people globally said they were more worried about climate change than they were last year – compared with 15 percent of people who said that they were less worried.

  • ›  There was a mounting concern about climate change in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where six in ten (59 percent) people said they were more worried about climate change than they were last year. This is compared to half (50 percent) of people in G20 countries.
  • ›  The countries where the most people were becoming more worried about climate change were Fiji (80 percent), Afghanistan (78 percent), Mexico and Türkiye (77 percent), while the country where the most people were becoming less worried about climate change was Saudi Arabia (53 percent).
  • ›  Women were more likely than men to be increasingly worried about climate change over the last year (55 percent of women compared to 51 percent of men). Across all the regions of the world, women in Latin America and the Caribbean were most likely to say they have become more worried about climate change.
  • ›  The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 found that older generations have become more worried about climate change. A majority of all age groups reported that they have become increasingly worried about climate change.

    • Climate change is on people’s minds. Over half (56 percent) of people globally said they have thought about climate change daily or weekly. Only around one in ten (11 percent) people said they never thought about climate change

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  • ›  The regions where the highest proportion of people were thinking about climate change daily were Arab States (47 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (44 percent) and Sub- Saharan Africa (40 percent).
  • ›  People in Uganda (62 percent), Sudan (61 percent) and El Salvador (56 percent) thought about climate change daily the most, while people in Jordan*1 (27 percent), Saudi Arabia (26 percent) and the United States (24 percent) were most likely to never think about climate change.
  • ›  Women were more likely to think about climate change daily or weekly, compared to men. Globally, 57 percent of women said they thought about climate change at least weekly, compared to 55 percent of men. However, within 25 countries, there was a gender gap of more than 5 percentage points, the largest being in Türkiye, at 17 percentage points, with 69 percent of women saying they thought about climate change daily or weekly, compared with 52 percent of men.
  • ›  In one-third (29 percent) of countries surveyed, majorities of people over the age of 60 were more likely to think about climate change either daily or at least weekly than younger generations.

    Countries marked with a single asterisk (*) had too few responses from certain socio-demographic groups to meet the very high-quality sample criteria. Estimates for these countries may be slightly less reliable and associated with a slightly larger margin of error than for others. See methodology for more details.

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• Big life decisions are impacted by climate change as extreme weather events continue to increase around the world. For over two-thirds of the world’s population (69 percent), these experiences have impacted people’s big decisions, such as where to live or work and what to buy.

  • ›  This figure was notably higher in LDCs (74 percent) where climate impacts on big decisions tended to be greater, including around nine in ten people in Afghanistan (91 percent) and Niger (88 percent).
  • ›  Similarly, climate-vulnerable Small Island Developing States (SIDS) were the most likely regional or economic grouping to say their big decisions were being affected by climate change (80 percent).

    • Extreme weather is becoming worse for most. Globally, nearly half (43 percent) of people said extreme weather events were worse than usual, compared with the previous year.

  • ›  A significantly higher percentage of people in SIDS felt that extreme weather events were worse than the previous year compared to the global population overall, at 53 percent.
  • ›  Countries where people were most likely to report that extreme weather events were worse than usual this year were Algeria (74 percent), Spain (73 percent) and Türkiye (72 percent).
  • ›  Analysis of the Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 reveals that those who experienced worse than usual extreme weather were more likely to think about climate change at least weekly (by 19 percentage points), had increased their worry about it more over the past year (by 37 percentage points) and factored it into big decisions (by 20 percentage points).

    The Peoples’ Stocktake

    • People are mixed on how their country is doing on climate. Across the world, approximately half (49 percent) of people said they thought their countries were doing well, compared with a quarter (25 percent) who said they were doing badly.

    • ›  The countries where people were most positive about their countries’ efforts were Saudi Arabia (81 percent), Bhutan (80 percent) and Ethiopia (78 percent), while the countries most likely to say their country was doing badly were Haiti (73 percent), Brazil (60 percent), Iran and Spain (55 percent).
    • ›  Women tended to be less satisfied with their country’s efforts on climate change. The gap was greatest in France (12 percentage points), Kenya (11 percentage points), China (10 percentage points) and Ethiopia and Russia (9 percentage points).

      • People are unconvinced by big businesses’ climate efforts. Just over one in three people (39 percent) globally said they think big businesses are doing well on addressing climate change.

  • ›  Within countries, people’s approval of businesses’ actions to address climate change varies significantly – from 9 percent of people in Greece* to 57 percent of people in China and Saudi Arabia. Countries in Asia and the Pacific had the highest level of approval of businesses’ efforts to address climate change, at nearly half of people (48 percent).
  • ›  However, just 14 percent of people globally said big businesses have had the biggest impact addressing climate change, compared with governments and other actors.

• People said the government is most impactful in addressing climate change. In 89 percent of countries surveyed, more people said their government has had the biggest impact addressing climate change than any other group, averaging 43 percent of people globally.

  • ›  Around the world, people also acknowledged the impactful role of other groups in addressing climate change, such as big businesses (14 percent), the United Nations (13 percent) and campaigners and activists (12 percent).
  • ›  Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the Pacific were the most likely regions to say their governments had been the most impactful, at 48 percent each. People in Indonesia (75 percent), Tanzania (68 percent) and Cambodia (64 percent) were the most likely to say their government has had the biggest impact on climate change. Meanwhile, people in France and Haiti (14 percent) and Italy (9 percent) were the least likely to say so.

    The Peoples’ Priorities

    • Majorities want their countries to strengthen climate commitments. Globally, four in every five people (80 percent) called for their country to strengthen its commitments to address climate change.

  • ›  People in more climate vulnerable regions and LDCs overwhelmingly called for stronger commitments to climate action. Nine in ten (89 percent) of people in LDCs said they wanted their country to strengthen its commitments to address climate change. Among G20 countries, this figure was still high, at three in four people (76 percent) who wanted stronger commitments.
  • ›  This included large majorities of people in every country surveyed, including 20 of the world’s highest GHG emission levels surveyed, ranging from 66 percent of people in Russia and the United States, to 93 percent in Italy.
  • ›  Women in some countries especially wanted stronger climate commitments compared with men, by 17 percentage points in Germany, 14 percentage points in Canada, 11 percentage points in Australia and the United States and 10 percentage points in France.
  • ›  People who said their country was doing well to address climate change still wanted stronger climate commitments. While there were large numbers of people who thought their countries were doing well or very well on climate change, further analysis of the results of the Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 found that 82 percent of such people also wanted their countries to strengthen their commitments to climate action.

    • People want to move away from fossil fuels quickly. Globally, 72 percent of people want their country to transition quickly from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Within 85 percent of countries (62 countries), a majority supported a quick transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy.

  • ›  Majorities in the world’s 10 biggest oil, gas and coal-producing countries said they supported a fast transition away from fossil fuels, with the exceptions of Iraq (43 percent) and Russia (16 percent).
  • ›  Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Northern America (Note: Northern America is used throughout the report to refer to Canada and the United States) were the least supportive of a quick transition away from fossil fuels. The low figures in their respective regions were represented by Russia (16 percent) and the United States (53 percent).

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› Public support for a rapid energy transition ranged significantly globally. The countries with the highest level of support were Italy, Nigeria and Türkiye (89 percent), while the weakest support came from Morocco (38 percent), Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) (33 percent) and Russia (16 percent).

• People want more protection from extreme weather. Safeguarding communities against extreme weather events was cited by a majority of people around the world as a priority. Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) people globally wanted their country to provide more protection for people at risk of extreme weather impacts.

  • ›  People in LDCs were more likely than those in other countries to support greater
    protection for those at risk (89 percent). This support was the strongest in many LDCs disproportionately impacted by climate extremes, such as Benin (97 percent) and Cambodia (96 percent).
  • ›  Meanwhile, support was lowest in Germany (55 percent), the Czechia* (44 percent) and Papua New Guinea**2 (43 percent). Northern America was the region with the lowest level of support for providing more protection for people from extreme weather events, at 57 percent, with relatively low support in both Canada (62 percent) but especially the United States (57 percent).

    • People want much more action on nature. As climate change worsens the existing nature and biodiversity crises, protecting nature emerged as a priority for people globally. Four in five (81 percent) people globally said their country should do a lot to protect and restore nature, while only one in ten (13 percent) said their country should do a little. Still fewer (5 percent) said their country should do nothing at all to protect and restore nature.

› Countries with the lowest support for protecting and restoring nature – Japan and Papua New Guinea** – still had a majority of people calling for more support, at 52 and just over 50 percent, respectively.

• People want more climate change education in schools. Eight in ten (80 percent) of people globally called on schools in their country to teach more about climate change, while just 6 percent of people globally said schools should teach less about climate change.

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Countries marked with a double asterisk (**) had many fewer than the required number of respondents from certain socio-demographic groups to meet the very high-quality sample criteria. Estimates for these countries may not adequately reflect the opinions of those groups and have higher margins of error. See methodology for more details.

› The proportion of those who wanted more climate education was higher in LDCs (93 percent) than in other countries. Support in those poorer countries was much higher than in the two richest regions of the world: Northern America (66 percent) and Western Europe (73 percent). Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa were the most supportive of increased climate education, at 93 percent and 92 percent, respectively.

The Peoples’ Call for Collaboration

• People want climate collaboration from countries. A huge majority (86 percent) of people globally said countries should put their disagreements aside and work together on addressing climate change.

  • ›  This included four out of five (84 percent) people in the G20, led by Mexico (95 percent), France and Italy (93 percent) and large majorities of people in the European Union3 countries surveyed (92 percent) and five original BRICS4 countries (83 percent).
  • ›  More educated groups were more supportive of international cooperation on climate change. While nearly three in four people (77 percent) surveyed who never attended school wanted countries to collaborate, a significantly higher proportion of those with primary
    (84 percent), secondary (87 percent) and post-secondary education (88 percent) wanted countries to collaborate on climate change.

    • People want more support for poorer countries on climate. The Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 found consistently high support for richer countries giving more help to poorer countries to address climate change. Over three in four people (79 percent) globally called for more help, as well as a majority of people in every country surveyed.

 

The call for more help for poorer countries to address climate change was most prominent in LDCs – some of the most climate vulnerable countries. There was a handful of countries where almost all people called for increased help for poorer countries, including Afghanistan and Haiti (97 percent), and Lao PDR (96 percent).

Within the six countries where women were significantly more in favor of richer countries giving more help to poorer countries, five are in the G20. These include the United States (by 18 percentage points), Australia (by 15 percentage points), Saudi Arabia (by 8 percentage points) and Brazil (7 percentage points). But the country with the largest gender gap in the opposite direction, India (6 percentage points), is also in the G20. The G20 is therefore a highly polarized group with respect to the gender gap in this discussion.

References for sources of additional data used in analysis and graphics

Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2023); The Shift Data Portal (2019) – with major processing by Our World in Data. ‘Coal production’ [dataset]. Energy Institute, ‘Statistical Review of World Energy’; The Shift Data Portal, “Energy production from fossil fuels” [original data]. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by- country

Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2023); The Shift Data Portal (2019) – with major processing by Our World in Data. ‘Gas production’ [dataset]. Energy Institute, ‘Statistical Review of World Energy’; The Shift Data Portal, “Energy production from fossil fuels” [original data]. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gas-production-by- country

Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. ‘Oil production’ [dataset]. Energy Institute, ‘Statistical Review of World Energy’ [original data]. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-region

World Bank (2022) ‘GDP (current US$)’ [dataset]. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD

World Bank (2022) ‘GDP per capita (current US$)’ [dataset]. Retrieved April 24, 2024 from

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

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