The Toronto Spark primarily focuses on underrepresented artists. However, it also publishes a column by David Suzuki to advance education about critical issues, including this one about public support for climate action.
Most people worldwide want action on climate change. A significant majority would even be willing to give up some of their income to help. You wouldn’t learn that from most mainstream media or politicians.
A 2024 survey of 130,000 people in 125 countries, published in Nature Climate Change, found 89 percent want “intensified political action” on climate and 74 percent would be willing to contribute a small percentage of their income to the cause. (The countries surveyed accounted for 96 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, 96 percent of gross domestic product, and 92 percent of population.)
Yet even many politicians who profess to understand and take the climate crisis seriously continue to promote fossil fuel development, including pipelines and fracking.
Often that’s because they’re beholden to the fossil fuel industry—thanks to lobbying and lucrative campaign donations, promises of cushy board positions on leaving politics and other support—or because they have interests and investments in the industry. But sometimes it’s because they believe the lie that there’s little or no public support. The survey’s authors note that this “perception gap” makes it difficult to implement necessary climate policies.
Consider that, in the last federal election, in response to a misleading industry and opposition campaign, the Liberals decided to get rid of an effective, and popular, policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon levy.
With much of mainstream media owned or controlled by people allied with, or at least sympathetic to, the oil, gas and coal industries, the real story gets ignored. Many people who support robust climate action simply don’t know they’re part of a large majority.
Even delegates to the United Nations Environment Assembly—191 from 53 countries, including policy negotiators—massively underestimated public support for climate policy, the Guardian reports. They estimated that, on average, 37 percent of people would be willing to pay one percent of their income to combat climate change. The true figure was 69 percent, with an additional five percent in favour of contributing a smaller amount.
As the survey study points out, “In democracies, the implementation of effective climate policies relies on popular support, and even in non-democratic societies, leaders remain attentive to prevailing political demands.”
Survey co-author Stefania Innocenti, from the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, said this disconnect leads politicians to water down policy proposals. “Policymakers will try to play it safe if they feel they have no public mandate.”
The study’s lead author, Ximeng Fang, of the Saïd Business School at Oxford, said, “Net zero is not just feasible but also economically sensible.”
Beyond their economic benefits, robust climate policies are crucial to human health and wellbeing. The world has already wasted too much time debating whether or not they’re needed.
The consequences of burning fossil fuels and degrading and destroying carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands are clear: an overheating world is causing less predictable weather, increasing droughts and floods, rising sea levels, ballooning health care costs, more conflict, and growing human migration.
Now scientific research has concluded that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, a critical component of the global climate system, will likely collapse if we don’t quickly get emissions under control. Recent analysis shows we’re likely to pass the tipping point within a few decades, with the collapse occurring 50 to 100 years after that.
“It would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50cm to already rising sea levels,” the Guardian reports.
There’s no reason to let this happen. We understand the problems and their solutions. Most will create numerous economic benefits, reduce pollution and related health impacts and, if done properly, decrease the wealth gap and create greater global equity.
All that’s holding us back are the fossil fuel industry and its supporters, including complicit media, politicians, and those who view systemic change as a threat to their obscene wealth. It’s plain to see how they conspire to convince the public that support for policies isn’t there. But it is.
People really do have the power. We just need to come together and exercise it.
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation senior writer and editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at davidsuzuki.org. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
