Climate Sock

We saw in December that governments seem to be expected largely to take responsibility for dealing with climate change, rather than to encourage people to be responsible themselves.

This struck me then as a problem, and data from January’s Mori poll adds weight to this thought, suggesting that there is a real risk in politicians being the main group that’s heard to talk about climate change. But the results also give us some of the most striking results I’ve seen to suggest that the British public are in fact pretty concerned about climate change.

At the end of their questionnaire, Mori asked the respondents their level of agreement with a series of statements, covering perceptions of climate change, personal responsibility, and the role of government. What the responses suggest is that people are worried about climate change, but are highly suspicious of politicians’ motives when they hear them talking about it.

The statements around the importance and impact of climate change indicate that levels of strong scepticism among the public remain relatively low. More than twice as many strongly disagree that climate change is “scaremongering”, and very few accept the argument that climate change is not necessarily bad for the planet.

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Left Foot Forward have published this Climate Sock article on the electoral impact of climate change.

If the last three months are anything to go by, the main battlegrounds for the general election will be the economy and the personality of the party leaders. But that doesn’t mean that climate change will necessarily be sidelined.

In previous elections, the climate hasn’t figured in any meaningful way. Yet, the polls suggest that it has the potential to play a bigger part in this election than it has in any previously. And while for Labour and the Lib Dems the climate presents an opportunity, for the Tories it could expose a damaging fault-line in the party.

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Much of the environmental blogosphere is getting het up about a new poll in the Brighton Argus, which claims to show that the Greens’ lead in Brighton Pavilion has been overhauled. According to the poll, Labour now lead, 16 points ahead of Tories, with the Greens in third on 19% – 16 points lower than they were in a December ’09 poll, which had put them in the lead. That’s a massive change for two months, and something that would really need explaining.

As Anthony Wells has argued on UK Polling Report, there are several reasons why we should be pretty wary about taking the new poll too seriously. The question is whether the differences between the two polls reflect a genuine change in attitudes, or are something to do with the methodology.

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Various polling houses have data on which of the parties are seen to be best for various issues – including the environment. The wording of the questions they use vary a little so the answers aren’t totally comparable across polls, but there are a couple of themes that come out consistently. For the examples below, I will use data from ICM’s August ’09 poll for the Guardian, as it’s the most recent that I’m aware of (I could have used others, like YouGov’s March ’09 data to come to the same conclusions).

The first point that stands out is that none of the three major parties are seen to be worse on the environment than the others: the Tories are best according to 19%, Labour are on 17%, the Lib Dems 16%, and Another Party 18%(1).

Secondly, and of course connected to the first point, of the issues covered by ICM the environment is the issue that is least ‘owned’ by a single party. Compared with the Tories leading on the environment with 19%, other issues are dominated by one party with much higher scores – for example, the Tories dominate Law and Order with 34%, and Labour wins Health Services with 31% (see graph below). read more »