Some new research from the Yale Program on Climate Communication has found strong support for climate action from every local authority area in the UK.

Available as interactive maps, the research uses MRP polling to estimate public opinion at a regional and local authority level.

This approach finds that 78% of UK residents are worried about climate change and 67% believe climate should be a high priority for the UK government. At a local level, variances exist but are small – in Scotland, the belief that climate should be a priority ranges from a low of 65% in Moray to a high of 74% in Edinburgh.

The Yale research is consistent with other studies, including polling of the UK’s most rural constituencies or Diffley polling (which LINK commissioned) on environmental attitudes in rural Scotland. The evidence is overwhelming that pro-climate attitudes are widely held and the mainstream view across the country.

But does it feel like this is reflected in the media coverage of environmental policy? Or in the political debate on climate?

I have mixed feelings on this. We have to date benefited from a solid cross-party consensus on the importance of climate action, which has at times been strained by the challenges of individual policy areas. Today, that consensus is under threat.

At both UK and Scottish levels, the Conservative leadership is increasingly pitching itself against Net Zero, while the rise of Reform as a genuine electoral presence will ensure that their own brand of climate scepticism will shape media coverage and political debate.

Most recently this was visible during the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election – in which Reform finished a strong third, winning 26% of the vote. In the days before polling Nigel Farage visited Scotland – with a press conference in Aberdeen, rather than the constituency itself – and described net zero as “utter madness”.

Reform voters are definitely outliers on climate. They are most likely to believe the risks of climate change have been exaggerated and least likely to believe the environment should be a priority. But it is also not the issue which is driving support for Reform. Ipsos found that of 2024 Reform voters, the top issues were immigration (78%), inflation/cost of living (59%), NHS (50%), crime (50%), and the economy (43%). 

What Reform, and the Conservatives, are doing is pitching climate as a cost of living issue – telling an electorate which feels increasingly skint that Net Zero is going to leave them even worse off.

The rise of the radical right

Across the western world, the most significant political development of the past decade has been the transformation of conservatism. 

In the MAGA-fication of the US Republicans, and the rise of the radical right across Europe, the centre-right has been replaced or transformed.

Attempts to explain this phenomenon are endless – you can pick anything from smartphones, to Russian interference, to the pandemic, to polarisation caused by an increasingly lonely and atomised society. Or depending on your perspective you might say immigration, or a backlash to the ‘woke’, or (indeed) environmental, mainstream.

What is undeniable is that voters globally responded to high inflation by punishing those in charge. And the radical right has been very well placed to benefit from this, as political outsiders with the ability to dominate the attention economy.

In comparison, the climate movement has begun to feel squeezed out.

The salience challenge

This is not reason to feel despondent. As the Yale research and others consistently show, the environment is a hugely popular cause.

The real squeeze on attitudes is not on support for climate action but on its salience.

I recently heard this described brilliantly as the conflict between ‘end of the world problems’ and ‘end of the month problems’. The median voter today wants their politicians to fix the planet, but they’re more likely to complain about public services or the cost of housing.

I suspect this challenge is partially cyclical. No issue dominates the headlines forever, and just as events have knocked climate down the news agenda, we can be sure that other events will move it back up.

But campaigners should also consider how to better compete in the attention economy, how to mobilise the broad base of public opinion we represent – and how to ensure politicians understand that deviating from the climate mainstream comes with political risks.