Update on UK public attitudes to climate and Net Zero policy

What we wanted to find out

• How, if at all, have UK public attitudes changed over the summer of 2026 in light of heatwaves and extreme weather both at home and abroad?
• How did voters respond to, or engage with, the heatwaves themselves?

What we did

• Two waves of YouGov polling throughout summer 2026, following a wave in April 2026 and half a dozen waves before that. As part of long-running tracker polling in the UK (LCEF). This was supplemented by analysis of public YouGov tracker datasets.
• Comparing attitude change from April 2026 to August 2026 across long-running sympathy, salience and alarm metrics.

What we discovered

• The summer heatwaves and wildfires significantly rebooted the issue salience of climate in the UK, at least for now. The issue climbed 10 percentage points in the ‘top 3 issues’ chart, the second largest jump of any single issue this year, taking it back into the top 5 for voters overall and top 3 for Labour 2024 voters.
• This prioritisation spike was especially high among progressive and Labour/Green voters, while it was lower in Scotland where there was less extreme heat. We see more partisan polarisation in this salience spike than previous years.
• Relatedly, the intensity and proximity of the threat of climate change increased - eg the % saying it will do ‘a great deal’ of harm to their region doubled. A clear majority of voters link what happened over the summer to man-made climate change.
• However, changes in policy and narrative change were more modest, overall. Policy support rose 2-3 percentage points on average, reflecting the fact that the heatwaves mostly took the majority of people who were already onside with Net Zero, but passive in their views, and made them more active in their support - rather than it converting hardened sceptics.
• That said, there was a meaningful uplift in support for ‘cost of inaction is too high’ arguments over ‘cost of action is too high’ arguments, especially among key Reform curious Labour voters.
• There is no sign of the 25% or so of voters opposed to Net Zero changing their position on the basis of the summer’s events. It is likely this fraction of opposition is here to stay since it is bound up in wider partisan attitudes and values.

For more depth on UK attitudes to Net Zero, see our March 2026 report. For comparable European attitudes, see CORE's Europe-wide report, which Persuasion contributed to.