(MENAFN- The Conversation) Polling on public attitudes to climate change show a dip in the numbers who worry about it in many high-income countries, compared with three years ago. This declining public concern will be a worry to those governments looking to push forward with new environmental measures.

High-income countries bear most of the costs of cleaning up the problems associated with climate change. This is largely because they are responsible for more emissions than less-developed countries, in part due to their legacy of early industrialisation. They also have the resources that low-income countries lack.

Changing public attitudes to climate change are tracked in detail by non-partisan thinktank Pew Research Center as part of massive global project. Drawing on this Pew data, the chart below shows the percentage of people in the 2022 and 2025 surveys who considered climate change a major threat across 16 high-income countries.

Overall, 73% of respondents from these countries thought climate change was a major threat in 2022, but by 2025 this had dropped to 66%.

In some countries, the fall in those who think climate change is a major threat has been quite significant – down by 13 percentage points in Poland, 11 in the Netherlands and Italy, nine percentage points in the UK and six in Germany. In the US, the decline was only three percentage points but it started from a low base, with only 54% perceiving climate change to be a serious threat in 2022 and 51% in 2025.

Across all 16 high-income countries, those with the least number of people who saw it as a major threat in 2025 were Israel (41%) and the US (51%).

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll showed that in the UK, 53% of adults think the economy and immigration are among the three most important issues facing the country, while only 15% think this about the environment.

Perceptions of climate change as major threat in high-income countries, 2022 and 2025:

Author's graph based on Pew data.

In contrast, perceptions of the threat from climate change have increased in a number of middle-income countries. For example, the public are increasingly worried in Brazil (up five percentage points between 2022 and 2025) and India (up eight points). And while only 40% of Turkish people saw it as a threat back in 2013, in the 2025 poll that number had risen to 70%.

Political influences

Another factor in these changes is current politics. According to the Pew analysis, people on the right politically have become less likely to call climate change a major threat since 2022.

In Poland, 40% of those on the right say this today, down from 63% in 2022. In the US, liberals are more than four times as likely as conservatives to say climate change is a major threat (84% compared to 20%). A quarter of Germans with a favourable view of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) say climate change is a major threat, compared with 78% of those who have an unfavourable view of that party.

Some demographics of attitudes to climate change in the Pew surveys appear in the chart below. The responses in the 16 high-income countries look at variations in age, sex and education, and perceptions of the threat from climate change.

Large percentages of the respondents in these countries see climate change as a major threat, something that was also evident in the first chart. Women (76%) are more likely to think it is a major threat than men (69%); people aged 56-65 are more likely to think it (75%) than young people between the ages of 18 and 25 (72%); and graduates (79%) are more likely to think it than non-graduates(71%). But the variations in attitudes across these groups are not large.

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In some countries – for example, Australia, France, Turkey and the US – adults under 35 are more likely than those aged 50 and older to see climate change as a major threat. But the reverse is true in Argentina, Japan, South Korea and Sweden.

The relationships between demographics and attitudes to climate change are part of wide research which shows women and educated people are generally more concerned about the risks posed by climate change than men and less-educated people.

It is worth noting that an average of two-thirds of the respondents in the high-income countries feel some concern about climate change in 2025, so it is still a significant issue for many.

Perceptions of threat from climate change across different groups in high-income countries:

Author's graph with data sourced from Pew. Why is this happening?

Problems such as the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine may have crowded out worries about climate change. In addition, there may be a sense among many people that climate change cannot be stopped. This is a type of issue fatigue where people start believing they can't make a difference, and so are less likely to talk about it.

However, the picture facing delegates at the UN climate summit, Cop30, in Brazil is not all gloomy. Climate change policies have acquired a powerful ally over the last decade or so: the rapid fall in costs of generating electricity using renewables rather than fossil fuels, which is likely to provide countries with a financial motivation to move away from fossil fuels.

However, whether this, as well as shifting political narratives and global issues, will drive public attitudes to change again in the next three years is unclear.

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