More than seven in 10 Canadians are worried about climate change and believe it is the reason for an increase in extreme weather, a new national poll suggests.
The Leger poll says only a small fraction of people listed climate change as the top issue facing Canada today, and many say they’re only likely to change their behaviour if that doesn’t come with a cost, The Canadian Press reports.
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But another leading opinion researcher says a different frame for Leger’s questions might have produced a more nuanced result on Canadians’ support for climate action and investment.
The new poll asked more than 1,500 people about their views on climate change in an online survey conducted between September 8 and 10.
The poll, which is weighted to account for demographic differences, can’t be assigned a margin of error because online surveys are not considered truly random samples.
Leger reported that 72% of Canadians surveyed said they are worried or very worried about climate change and 21% said they were not very worried. Only 7% said they weren’t worried about it at all.
Respondents from Quebec were most likely to be worried or very worried, at 84%, while Alberta recorded a much smaller majority, at 55% worried.
Younger Canadians are more concerned about the climate than older Canadians, and women are more worried than men.
Pocketbook issues heavily outweighed climate change as a top-of-mind issue for Canadians in the poll, with only 7% of those surveyed listing climate change as the top issue facing the country.
The largest share—33%—cited inflation as the top issue, 16% chose housing affordability, and 8% pointed to rising interest rates.
Some 69% of those surveyed said climate change is caused by human activity, while 21% said they believe it’s just part of a natural pattern. More than 80% of Quebec residents polled blamed human activity for climate change, as did 51% in Alberta.
Almost three-quarters of Canadians surveyed think extreme weather events are linked to climate change, and about two in three think the country will see more extreme weather in the future.
Sixty-one per cent of respondents said they have already changed some of their daily behaviour because of their concerns about climate change and 68% said they planned to make changes to their daily life in the next five years.
Only 40% said they’d make changes that come with a cost.
But James Boothroyd, managing director of Vancouver-based EcoAnalytics Research, said survey respondents “will support transitioning to renewables when framed as a public investment that is fair, that all contribute to (individuals, government, and industry), and when the investments are seen as part of a comprehensive bundle of socio-economic supports,” as they are in the United States under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“Asking people to say how much they would pay individually employs a strategic frame that causes respondents to think of themselves in isolation, individually on the hook, and perhaps defensive,” Boothroyd told The Energy Mix in an email. “This is quite a different thing from asking them to contribute their part… to necessary public investments for a healthier, more secure future.”
In EcoAnalytics’ own research earlier this year, 45% of respondents identified affordability as their biggest concern, with only 8% naming climate change, he added. But that opens the door for storylines that emphasize “the greater affordability and price stability of renewable energy compared with fossil fuels, once up-front costs are covered.”
The Leger poll comes at the end of Canada’s worst wildfire season in history, CP writes.
Globally, temperatures hit record highs in July, while Canadians in every province and much of the North were directly impacted by fires—if not from the blazes directly, then by the thick smoke from those fires that blanketed cities and towns thousands of kilometres away.
More than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes between May and September and hundreds of homes burned, including about 200 in suburban Halifax in the spring, and almost as many in West Kelowna, British Columbia, in August.
Climate advocates have long argued Canadians need to be thinking not just about how much it costs to change our behaviour to slow climate change, but also how much it costs not to act.
Last spring, the federal government issued an updated analysis showing it cost Canada $261 this year for every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions emitted. Those costs include the impact of extreme weather on things like food production, human health, and disaster repair bills. The analysis suggested that by 2030, that cost will rise to $294 per tonne.
The most recent inventory showed Canada emitted about 670 million tonnes in 2021, although this year’s wildfires are on track to double or triple that total. The current target aims to reduce that by more than 230 million tonnes a year by 2030.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published September 13, 2023.
