Rightwing voters in Australia are less likely to consider climate change a major threat compared to rightwing voters in most other comparable nations, according to a major international survey.
The latest Pew Research Centre survey, however, showed that overall more Australians are worried about climate change than ever before.
Australia was the only non-European nation in the survey to rate climate change as the greatest threat from the five threats listed, with 71% of respondents rating it their number one concern.
But there were stark differences between the views of those who identified as rightwing and leftwing on the issue of climate change in Australia, compared with most other surveyed countries, bar the US.
Our new @pewglobal survey has some big ideological differences on views about climate change, especially in the US https://t.co/wnQV2zGIox pic.twitter.com/WW7r4sF5x7
— Richard Wike (@RichardWike) August 31, 2022
Some 91% of Australian respondents who self-identified as being on the left side of politics said climate change was a major threat, while just 47% of those on the right thought the same way.
In the UK, by contrast, 84% of leftwing respondents said climate change was a major threat, while 68% of rightwing respondents agreed. In France, 86% of leftwing respondents said it was a major threat, as did 75% of rightwing respondents.
The political divide on the topic in Australia was the second highest, with only the US ranking higher, where 85% of leftwing respondents said climate change was a major threat, but just 22% of rightwing respondents agreed.
Less than 50% of rightwing respondents in Canada and Israel also said climate change was a major threat, though the gap between left and right was less pronounced than Australia.
It is frankly terrifying that one third of Pakistan is underwater, China is experiencing its worst drought in record, as are the olive-producing regions of southern Spain, and we’re currently only at 1.2C of warming.
— Donna Lu (@donnadlu) August 29, 2022
The gap between Australian men and women on the topic was also vast, with 64% of male respondents finding climate change to be a major threat compared to 78% of female respondents – one of the highest divides of the 19 nations. Continuing that trend, age was also a major difference in thinking in Australia, with 85% of people aged between 18 and 29 ranking climate change as a major threat compared to 63% of those 50 and older.
But compared to the 2013 survey, when just 52% of Australians ranked climate change as a major threat to the country, more Australians were awake to the danger, with seven out of 10 respondents believing it to be a serious concern. That rise in concern tracks with last year’s Climate of the Nation result, which also found Australians were increasingly anxious about the changing climate.
Respondents were asked to rank their concerns over five global threats, with the spread of false information online, cyber-attacks from other countries, the condition of the global economy and the spread of infectious diseases rounding out the list.
Australians were less worried about the impact of the other four threats on the list, including the spread of infectious diseases, with Australians only moderately (2%) more worried than in 2020 when 59% of people rated it a major threat.
Australia is already feeling the impact of a changing climate, with more frequent and more severe natural disasters.
A new study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment suggested even if the world was to meet the Paris agreement and limit global warming to 2C, exposure to dangerous heat will “likely increase by 50-100% across much of the tropics”. That includes northern Australia. Dangerous heat was classified as being above 39C.
The Albanese government has refused to rule out approving new fossil fuel mining projects and recently opened up another 47,000 sq km of Australian waters to oil and gas exploration.
The Pew Research survey included 2,034 Australians who were polled (mostly online) between 15 and 28 March. The survey carries a 2.8% margin of error.
