‘Discouraging’ attitudes to climate action highlights challenge ahead – campaigners

The results of an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll, which found many voters are opposed to potential climate actions that would affect them personally, is “very discouraging”, a leading environmental campaigner has said.

Tony Lowes, of Friends of the Irish Environment, said he was “absolutely gobsmacked” by the answers, which make it “really clear” that it will be a challenge to bring people on board with the tougher actions required to protect the planet.

“It is as if climate change is taking place in another room . . . This is an eye-opener for the environmental community who have failed entirely to make their case,” he said.

The poll asked voters about a series of potential, planned or suggested climate action measures. Their responses showed significant opposition to many of the measures, while opinion was split on others.

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Mr Lowes said he doesn’t believe “we have a hope of bringing in changes” unless the opinion poll results flip in support of the measures needed.

“I was particularly disturbed by the universal rejection of the carbon tax,” he said, referencing the 82 per cent of people polled who said they would oppose higher taxes on energy and fuel.

“It is a no-brainer and it has been around [as a concept] for years. People should have taken it on board by now,” he said.

Mr Lowes said he does not agree with Sinn Féin’s call to pause any increase of the carbon budget this year due to rising global energy costs.

“We have to keep the ship on the course we have determined. Any suggestion we should slow down the carbon tax is not on the table. We have to make these commitments or civilisation as we know it won’t survive. It is that simple,” he said.

Context of rising costs

Oisín Coghlan, director of Friends of the Earth, said the overall rejection of higher taxes on energy and fuel must be read in the context of the rocketing costs of energy for reasons unrelated to climate action.

Mr Coghlan said he was “surprised” by some of the responses, including that 40 per cent of people support air travel tariffs. “Generally people are not in favour of higher taxes,” he noted.

However, he said people were responding to negatively phrased questions without much of the surrounding context, and there is “always a natural bias towards the way things are”.

Pointing to the question which found 60 per cent of respondents would not support reducing the size of the national cattle herd, Mr Coghlan said: “People won’t have the context that the national herd has really increased over the last 10 years.”

While acknowledging that the political poll had aimed to gauge the level of support for the more punitive actions that may be required to tackle the crisis, Mr Coghlan said it is “worth acknowledging that the broader suite of actions will have things people like”.

“It would be interesting to know people’s attitudes to more buses and cycle lanes,” he added.

Furthermore, due to European legally binding targets, Ireland is now “legally obliged to do what we were always morally obliged to do”, he said, so failure to reduce pollution will result in other financial consequences for Irish citizens.

“We are accelerating towards a cliff at the moment. We have to break hard,” he added.

Framing policies

The chairman of An Taisce’s Climate Change Committee, Kevin O’Farrell, said people are put off by the framing of a policy as having a negative consequence on their lives. “If you bring up the tougher measures people are just going to run away,” he said, adding that more nuanced poll questions might have revealed more.

Mr O’Farrell pointed to the extreme measures people endured to protect public health during the pandemic as proof that change can be enacted quickly if required. However, many are struggling with the increased cost of living and the climate crisis remains “abstract” in their minds.

“Some of this stuff they cannot get their head around . . . The reality is people see it as costing them,” he said.

That 72 per cent of people are opposed to increasing the cost of purchasing a diesel or petrol car is evidence that they do not see viable alternatives, he said.

“They see the cost of an electric [vehicle] and how difficult it is to charge. They look at public transport and they see it is not there . . . They don’t see how they can make the change,” he said.