80% of people worldwide want more to combat climate change

The People’s Climate Vote is the world’s largest public survey on climate change, with over 73,000 people in 77 countries participating.

—

Amid historic heatwaves and widespread climate impacts, humanity’s view of climate change is changing, with more people around the world calling for more adaptation and mitigation measures, a new comprehensive global survey shows.

The second edition of the People’s Climate Vote, a poll conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the University of Oxford, released last week, found that an overwhelming majority of people around the world are now concerned about the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods and mental health.

The survey, conducted in 87 languages, was attended by over 73,000 people of different ages, cultural and geographical backgrounds from 77 countries, representing 87% of the world’s population.

The survey comes at a crucial time. 2024 is the world’s biggest election year ever. Around four billion people – about half the world’s population – are eligible to vote.

On average, 43 percent of people in 89 percent of countries surveyed said their government had had the greatest influence on tackling the climate crisis, compared to big business (14 percent), the United Nations (13 percent) and environmental activists and campaigns (12 percent).

Four in five respondents (80%) want their country to do more to address climate change. This is especially true for people in climate-vulnerable regions: 89% of people in least developed countries (LDCs) say they want their country to step up its commitments to address the climate crisis. Poor and developing countries have historically borne the brunt, despite contributing the least to planet-warming emissions. In contrast, G20 economies – the world’s largest economies – are responsible for about 75-80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

About 72 percent of survey respondents said they want their country to quickly transition away from fossil fuels and switch to clean energy. The majority of people in the world’s top 10 oil, coal and gas producers support a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. This is particularly true in Iraq (43 percent) and Russia (16 percent).

The burning of coal, natural gas and oil to generate electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the main cause of global warming because they trap heat in the atmosphere and raise the Earth’s surface temperature. Global fossil fuel consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years as countries around the world seek to improve their living standards and economic performance. In 2023, all three of the most potent greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide – reached record levels.

Climate scientists agree that climate change is accelerating faster than expected and affecting all parts of the world.

May’s temperatures were the highest ever recorded for the month, setting a record for a consecutive year after 2023 went down as the hottest year on record. May was also 1.52°C above the pre-industrial average from 1850 to 1900, making it the 11th month in a row that temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. While this does not represent a permanent breach of the critical limit, which scientists say will be measured over decades, it is a clear warning to humanity that we are approaching the point of no return much faster than expected.

As the impacts of climate change become more apparent, nearly eight in ten, or 78%, of people are calling for more protection from extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts, heavy rains, floods, tropical cyclones and tornadoes, and 81% want more action to protect nature.

Many countries have endured some of the worst weather extremes in history in recent years – from the most devastating wildfire season ever in Canada and Australia to devastating floods in Libya – which experts say have become up to 50 times more likely and severe due to climate change – and Pakistan, where thousands of people died and millions lost their homes.

An overwhelming majority of respondents (79%) also wanted richer countries to help poorer countries fight climate change. The latter have been calling for decades for climate finance and compensation for the economic, social and cultural losses and damage caused by human-induced climate change – also known as “losses and damages”.

Only two years ago – during the UN climate summit COP27 in Egypt – countries finally agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to help developing countries cope with the damage caused by global warming. But so far, total pledges amount to only $661 million, less than 0.2 percent of the economic and non-economic losses suffered by developing countries each year due to global warming. These losses are estimated at at least $400 billion per year and are expected to rise as the crisis deepens.