Rebecca Colvin, Australian National University and Frank Jotzo, Australian National University
Poll after poll suggests a large majority of Australians cares about climate change. Yet in recent federal elections, this hasn’t translated into wins for parties with stronger policy platforms on climate change.
So what determines someone’s climate change attitude, and how does it translate into voting?
In research published today, we studied 2,033 Australian voters’ attitudes across the political spectrum in the context of the 2019 federal election. And we found over 80% said they think it’s important Australia reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This includes close to 70% of conservative voters (those voting for Coalition parties).
However, digging deeper reveals nuance to these attitudes. While most Australians support climate action, stark differences emerge along political party preferences in terms of how important voters think it is.
Our research suggests the question about social support for climate action in Australia is no longer: “does climate change matter to enough Australians?”. Instead, the critical question may well be: “does climate change matter enough to Australians to shift climate politics?”.
Why the ‘climate election’ didn’t pan out
We conducted our survey in July 2019, two months after the Coalition won the federal election. Its victory came as a surprise to many, as the election was sometimes billed the “climate election”, implying climate change was a bellwether issue.
The climate policies of the two major parties were night and day, with the Labor Party campaigning on ambitious mitigation targets and the incumbent Coalition maintaining the status quo of very limited climate policy.
So what were the voters thinking?
We found about half of Australian voters (52%) said climate change was important when deciding their vote in the 2019 Australian federal election. However, climate was the most important issue for only 14% of voters.
Even among those who said they felt it was extremely important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most (58%) said climate change was important, but not the most important issue, when deciding their vote.
Read more: Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side
Climate change was stated as the most important issue for 21% of Labor voters and 39% of Greens voters, but for less than 5% of Liberal Party, National Party, and Queensland LNP voters.
This pattern was reversed for those who didn’t take climate change policy into account in their vote: 26% of Liberal, 21% of National, and 31% of Queensland LNP voters did not consider climate change when deciding their vote. Under 15% of Labor and Greens voters did the same.
And when we looked at how much voters cared about climate action, the differences become more potent. Three quarters (73%) of progressive voters (those voting for the ALP or the Greens) see Australian action to reduce emissions as “extremely important”. Only one quarter (26%) of conservative voters say the same thing.
Who’s more willing to make sacrifices for the climate?
Our research also explored the extent voters were willing to accept a personal cost to support climate action. We asked about their willingness to accept a significant or small personal cost, but didn’t specify what we meant by small or significant, because a small cost to one person may be a significant cost to another.
Most voters (72%) said they’d be willing to incur some personal cost in return for emissions reductions. Across the political spectrum, the proportion of voters willing to accept a small personal cost is relatively similar: 60% of progressive voters, 55% of conservative voters.
Major differences emerge when it comes to “significant personal cost”.
While 26% of progressive voters are willing to incur a significant personal cost, only 5% of conservative voters feel similarly. At the other end of the spectrum, 40% of conservative voters are unwilling to incur any personal cost, but only 14% of progressive voters feel the same.
Support for strong climate policies may depend on whether the policies will, or are perceived to, personally impact voters. Given political leaders’ stances influence public support for climate policies (as 2018 research showed), our research highlights an opportunity for conservative political leaders to clarify their position on climate change.
Interestingly, age was a consistent predictor of responses. Younger people were more likely than older people to consider it important that Australia reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Younger people were more willing to incur a personal cost to support climate action, and to consider climate change when deciding their vote.
In fact, we found an Australian voter from the Baby Boomer generation is half as likely as a voter from Generation Z to consider it important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Divisive politics have a limited shelf life
If future young people cared just as much about climate change as today’s young people, and if existing cohorts don’t change their views as they age, then the percentage of Australian voters who consider greenhouse gas emissions to be “extremely important” is likely to increase from 52% in our 2019 data, to 56% by 2030. By 2050, this figure could rise to 65%.
These projections are purely on the basis of more climate-aware cohorts coming into voting age and replacing older voters. It doesn’t consider any future changes in attitudes within cohorts (which may also make a big difference).
The key implication is simple. If Australian political leaders pursued stronger climate action, they could rest assured most of the voting population will broadly support them, along with most of their own voter base — regardless of which party is in power.
This will become only more pronounced with gradual generational change, and likely changes in attitudes within age groups. In any case, it’s clear divisive politics that result in climate delay have a limited shelf life.
Read more: Nearly 80% of Australians affected in some way by the bushfires, new survey shows
Rebecca Colvin, Senior lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Maybe 80% of Australians care about climate change but they are surely well informed on the issue by catallaxy files dot com and a few other critical observers of this issue down undah.
https://catallaxyfiles.com/
The prophecy of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling … warming… change notwithstanding, Aussies are not so green to adopt the Green blight and intermittent/renewable energy. It’s better to purchase carbon offsets, be carbon neutral, and socially responsible. Throw another baby on the barbie, the masks are off.
This Aussie doesn’t give a flying fu …… fire truck about climate policies … period!
Not important to me. I can fly from the cool south of Tasmania to the Tropical north in Australia in a day, all within my own country. I am one of the disbelievers.
OK if progressives feel this way let them pay double for it as the rest of us are fully or partly aware that we are being taken for a very expensive and technologically backward ride.
Solar and Wind electricity generation was invented in the 1890’s it was crap then and it’s crap now.
If the progressives don’t want nuclear then they can pay for their sun traps and windmills so they can virtue signal and wave to their socialist mates over the fence of rationality.
Dont people in Australia understand they live on the hottest and driest continent on the planet? 99% of the landmass is bone-dry desert.
It has been that way for eons and will remain so for eons more no matter what they do.
Perhaps they are showing their awareness in other ways:
Australia has the highest uptake of solar globally, with more than 21% of homes with rooftop solar PV. As of 31 December 2020 more than 2.66 million rooftop solar power systems have been installed across Australia…
Anda record amount of new solar has been fitted to Australia’s households and businesses in the first three months of this year, an increase of 46% on the same period last year.
Installations in Victoria have surged 90% after the state introduced an incentive scheme.
It’s calculated that customers will save $600 million on their power bills over the next decade, thanks to the installations.
So that just proves that they like to lower their electric bills.
Yes but it heavily subsidized. I receive 7 cents per kWh but for much of the day the market price is well below this. There has been the suggestion this week that we should pay to feed into the grid. We’ll see then who is putting on solar to save the planet and who is just saving money
Griff,
Australia has a population of around 25.7 million or 0.33% of total world population. The numbers installing solar are therefore miniscule on a world basis
More research needed – ask yourself why, find out why.
Tip – heavily subsidised by the taxpayer = let someone else pay my bill without ant thought of the consequences. Nothing to do with CC blah blah
Subsidised by the very people who cannot install solar with higher electricity prices.
Yet another post by the uninformed Griff who has no idea what the deal is with solar here. Solar electricity is a fools game subsidised by tax payers and people who cannot install solar and who pay for those that can through higher prices. Solar water heating on the other hand works very well and is quite common.
“the percentage of Australian voters who consider greenhouse gas emissions to be “extremely important” is likely to increase from 52% in our 2019 data, to 56% by 2030. By 2050, this figure could rise to 65%.”
What’s the good of that? By 2050 we’ll all be dead, won’t we? Or is all that talk of an ‘existential crisis’ just baloney?
There was a poll conducted on behalf of the European Parliament at the end of last year. This was one of their questions:
Among the following, what should be the main priorities for the European Parliament? (Max 4 answers)
…and then 15 subjects to choose from.
Coming in 6th out of 15 – Measures to develop renewable energy and reach carbon neutrality.
The average for the EU27 was 23% want this in their top 4 priorities.
Highest was Sweden 49%, lowest was Portugal 10%.
Italy 20%, France 20%, Spain 16%, Germany 32%.
Other countries under 20%: Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia.
Opinion polls used to be an indication of peoples opinions. That was in the days before intimidation became an everyday part of political campaigning. Since then people do not speak openly about their intentions for fear of retribution.
The Scottish independence referendum here in the UK back in 2014 was a classic recent example, The thuggery and threats, bricks through windows and so on, giving rise to a false sense of support for their cause. The more sensible voters saved their actual opinion for the day of the vote.
The reality is the answers given in any poll are influenced by the way the question is phrased and or asked.
.
People, when polled, tend to give answers that reflect well on themselves, but not necessarily indicate their genuine views or likely actions. This noted discrepancy between words and deeds gave impetus to the field of ‘motivational research’ and spawned more carefully crafted advertising.
‘Environmental responsibility’ is now fashionable and it should be unsurprising that polls reflect this. What is surprising is the expectation that the polls ought to be believable.
Sure these younger people say they will make a significant sacrifice but maybe the researchers should have tried to find out how many are actually doing that. When they protest in the streets about using the internet for games I’ll start to believe them.
One of the major reasons I don’t believe in man made climate change is that I see so very few people acting as though they believe it themselves.
The devil is always in the detail.
Notice that these ‘studies’ always find high numbers of people who say something.
But if you look up studies that ask people what they will personally pay…. suddenly support falls off a cliff.
The Australia Talks Survey found that the 50% point for supporting climate change action (where 50% will do something, and 50% won’t) was at $200 per year per person. Yes … the majority of Australians don’t even support paying $4/wk to act on climate change.
Needless to say… The support for massive climate change action, say on the order of $50/wk or $100/wk , or even more…. is basically near 0% in Australia. Gillard/Rudd government was voted out mostly over carbon tax which for most people was an impact of less than $14/wk.
Australians are stupid.
They seem to be assuming that anyone who answers a questionnaire will answer honestly.
But who cares? I’ve just done my UK census questionnaire. I lied about my race and religion.
Ask a silly question . . .