Why are we not listening to the will of the people on climate?

If it’s not too long ago to remember, Brexit was won on 52% of votes. It was a simple majority, and by the rules of the vote, democracy was served, people were heard, and we protractedly left the European Union. 

If it had been 86% of people who wanted to leave the EU, perhaps the vote would have been easier for the aftermath. 86% is, I’d say, a whopping majority in anyone’s book. You could feel bitter losing, but even the most ardent Remainer would have to admit they lost very badly and that it was clear a huge voting majority wanted change.

So what do we do with the fact that the percentage of people in the UK who think climate change is happening is 86% – and that they outnumber those who think it is not happening (6%) by a ratio of more than 14:1? And that more whopping majorities of people in the UK think it is caused by us (75%) and say they are at least “somewhat worried” about climate change (80%) – including 35% who say they are “very worried.”

These are the results of a major new survey by the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication conducted in November 2024. A nationally representative survey of over 10,000 people was conducted – solid methodology in anyone’s book.

Another big majority (68%) say their local area has experienced at least one environmental problem in the last 12 months. Mainly storms, flooding and pollution. Another huge majority (82%) support the use and growth of renewable energy. 

A majority of 82% believe climate change is important to them. And another huge majority (85%) also think climate change will harm future generations, our kids and grandkids. 

So what do we do with these huge facts showing us what British people feel and want? Because it doesn’t seem like we know this about each other at all. Maybe amongst some friends and family. But as a nation? No. We don’t know this about each other.

So who’s responsible for that?

If you ask me, the institutions and people who are meant to serve us – government, politicians, the media, big corporations, some public figures – work very hard to try and convince us that UK citizens don’t feel this way. That we don’t agree. But we do.

Why? What does happen to these facts about what British people feel and want?

If you’re a big corporation in an industry like aviation, you try to bury these facts. If your name is Heathrow, for example, what you do is put millions of pounds into slick public relations, into lobbying governments, into astroturfing, freebies, and arguing that a completely unworkable technology (“sustainable” aviation fuel) will save all of us, including, presumably, the PR salesperson's kids.

If you’re a newspaper or social media platform that thrives on division, fear and conspiracy, you double-down on your attacks on anyone who dares to offer sensible suggestions that 80% of UK citizens want, such as insulating our homes.

If you’re a political commentator trying to carve out money and power, you make the suggestion, as Matt Goodwin does, that the British public wants something like this to happen: in his wet-fantasy British future a new Trump-inspired government “is withdrawing the UK from the Paris Agreement, with the £11.6 billion allocated for International Climate Finance being redirected to spend on improving the National Health Service and social care system instead.”

Where have we heard “let’s withdraw from X and spend hundreds of millions on the NHS” before…? Oh yes, the Boris Brexit bus. A big lie, in that the money never did get spent on the NHS. Do we fall for the same trick again?

If you’re a politician lost in the wilderness (Starmer) caught in the headlights (Reeves), living in a fantasy (Truss) or profiteering from misinformation (Farage) then what you do with these facts about what British people want done on climate, is either: a) double-down on environmental safety being destructive for ‘growth’; and/or b) demonise any attempts to give us want we want: action on climate change and its impacts.

What do these self-serving interests have in common? They’re all refusing to admit what the whopping majority of us in the UK want on climate – to protect our wonderful country, each other, and future generations from harm. They do this by trying to tell us that the reverse of the facts is true. That is: they are trying to gaslight us. 

Of course we want to spend more money on our NHS. We also want there to be a future in which our kids can depend on that same NHS. This isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s a fair-enough politics. Anyway, if we want to raise £11bn, tax the millionaires who are asking to be taxed more! Simples!

Because there are two real problems here, not made-up-misinformation problems.

The first is not a lack of cash; that we have to choose to spend either on the NHS or stopping harms to our kids from devastating floods and worsening storms. The first real problem is that the really rich billionaires, the media billionaires and the social media barons and the corporate and shareholder billionaires, and their cheerleaders in politics and on substack, don’t want their profits being shrunk by we, the people, realising we want different things from them. Remember, these are the people who got even more whoppingly rich over lockdown, while the rest of us suffered.

Because if the billionaires really want more money spent on the NHS, why don’t they give us their money? If the corporations really want better social care, why don’t they stop buying up social care and asset stripping it? 

The second real problem is that the shareholders of Heathrow and the owners of the Telegraph and snake-oil pedlars with word-diarrhoea hate the fact that a massive, whopping majority of us disagrees with them, and do want action on climate. 

Because action on climate will eat into their money or power. They don’t like that at all. 

So what they do is this: they try to portray a different United Kingdom. One that isn’t a true reflection of us. They gaslight us, hoping we believe their misinformation.

There are a number of fixes to this. 

First, we have to let everyone in the UK know that the whopping majority of our fellow citizens want the same thing we all do on climate: action, now. Not at the expense of the NHS, but as well as funding the NHS. We refuse to be quiet about this. 

Second, and this hasn’t been done enough at all, we have to continually show how the impacts of climate change that people have seen affecting the UK right here and right now – including flooding (88%), severe storms (85%), rising sea levels (80%), air pollution (79%), extreme heat (79%), water pollution (74%), water shortages (73%), droughts (71%), agricultural pests and diseases (65%), and wildfires (62%) – are always linked to the causes of climate change. Climate change causes this. Done.

The causes of climate chaos are the use of fossil fuels and release of other gases such as methane. The vast majority of this pollution of our planet benefits a tiny few to whom the pollution offers whopping unshared wealth. This situation is self-terminating. That is: we all get to die for it. As the sober and serious people at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries wrote just over a week ago, we are looking at 4 billion deaths by 2070 because of catastrophic climate impacts such as floods, pollution, and wildfires. Half the world’s population gone, mainly through starving.

Remember, actuaries are not the enemies that Nigel Farage, the Telegraph, and Matt Goodwin would have you believe. They’re accountants. Might even be your accountant. Boring people maybe (another bit of misinformation!) but ordinary people, who want their kids to have a future and not be harmed. 

What do want? Whopping majorities, or whopping lies? 

What do you want our public servants to do with these facts? I want them to stop the greed of big corporations, and stop the lies spreading.

But I don’t trust the government to do this. Most of us don’t: a small but bigger-than-Brexit majority of people say they “almost never trust politicians of any party in Britain to tell the truth when they are in a tight corner”.

Instead, I trust people. I trust us as a country to get this right. Let’s learn more about each other, talk to each other, away from the media, discover what we really want among ourselves. And when corporations, industries, and power-mad people show us their true colours by gaslighting us, let’s see them for what they are – and what they’re really after. Hint: it’s not the best for you, me, our NHS, or our future generations.

We are the whopping majority. Ordinary, good people who want the best for each other. Let’s keep reminding ourselves of that every day.