What do Australians think about climate change?

A near consensus of climate scientists who publish in refereed journals, approximately 97 per cent according to some estimates (see Cook et al, 2013; 2016) maintain climate change has mainly human (anthropogenic) causes.  However, public opinion does not always reflect scientific findings.  While approximately two thirds of Australians agree climate change has mainly human causes, around 20 per cent believe climate change is a natural occurrence, according to the 2023 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA).   A further 5 per cent do not believe climate change is occurring at all, while 11 per cent are unsure. ¹  As shown in Figure 1, the percentage of Australians agreeing climate change has human causes reached a high point at 72 per cent in 2021, but has since declined. ²

Consistently worded questions in the AuSSA allow us to examine some of the key correlates of climate change attitudes.  When the anthropogenic responses are disaggregated by respondent sex, political party affiliations, tertiary education and age, some interesting shifts in public opinion are apparent.³   Women have tended to be more likely than men to support environmental issues in Australia (Tranter, 2014).  Figure 2 illustrates how the attitudes of men and women diverge over climate change, most notably at the beginning and the end of this time series.  While men were somewhat less likely than women to agree with the scientific consensus position in most AuSSA, women declined from a high point of 74 per cent to 70 per cent in 2023.  Yet, a far more dramatic decline is apparent among men, down from 71 per cent in 2022 to 60 per cent in 2023 (Figure 2).⁴

AuSSA respondents who accept anthropogenic climate change is happening, also diverge according to their political party identifications (in Figure 3).⁵ Unsurprisingly, those who identify as Greens are most likely to accept human causes of climate change, with responses close to or at 100 percent across all surveys.  Labor identifiers were edging closer to Greens over time, until the most recent survey.  While their acceptance of anthropogenic climate change remains high, Labor identifiers declined by 9 percentage points in 2023.  

A majority of non-identifiers accept the scientific consensus (66% in 2023), however, Coalition supporters are far less likely to agree that climate change has human causes, only 46 per cent did so in 2021, while agreement plummeted to only 38 per cent in 2023.  Non-identifiers and Coalition supporters tend to exhibit less consistent attitudinal responses over time, although they were also less likely to support human caused climate change in recent surveys.

Tertiary education is another important correlate of environmental attitudes, with graduates consistently more likely to agree that climate change has human causes.  Apart from a dip in 2019, approximately 80 per cent of graduates accept ACC since 2017, rising to 84 per cent in 2023.  Although non-graduates peaked at 71 per cent in 2021, agreement declined in subsequent surveys, down to 63 per cent in 2023. The gap in climate change attitudes between graduates and non-graduates continues to grow wider in recent surveys.

Finally, accepting that humans cause climate change tends be lowest among the oldest (70 plus) and highest among the youngest age groups.  The 30 to 39 and 40 to 49 cohorts show similar responses over time, still there is a clear gap between these groups and the 18 to 29  year olds.   Nevertheless, all age cohorts (with the exception of the 50 to 59 year olds), exhibited less agreement in the most recent survey conducted in 2023.    These results from AuSSA are consistent with gender, age, education, and political party identifications differences among the Australian public, when it comes to trust in climate scientists.   As Tranter, et al., (2023) found, men were less likely than women, older Australians less likely than younger, the non-tertiary educated less likely than graduates, and Coalition identifiers less likely than Labor or Greens identifiers to trust climate change projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

1. The AuSSA ‘climate change attitudes’ question asked “Which of the following do you personally believe…
   * Climate change is happening now, and is caused mainly by human activities
   * Climate change is happening now, but is caused mainly by natural forces
   * Climate change is not happening now
   * I don’t know whether climate change is happening or not” ↩︎
2. Some Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding. ↩︎
3. Prior to 2022 the AuSSA measured sex/gender with “Are you…male; female”. From 2022 onwards the question was changed to measure respondent gender “How do you describe your gender? (Gender refers to current gender, which may be different to sex recorded at birth and may be different to what is indicated on legal documents.) Please cross one box only
   Man or male
   Woman or female
   Non-binary
   Prefer not to answer
   I use a different term (please specify).
   For comparability with earlier years the ‘non-binary’, ‘prefer not to answer’ and ‘different term’ responses are omitted for 2022 and 2023, reducing the sample size by 33 cases. ↩︎
4. In survey research, not all participants respond to every question, these are referred to as ‘missing data’ or ‘non-responses’. Cases are often lost when responses to multiple questions are included in an analysis, as is the case in Figures 2 and 3, where multiple variables are involved (i.e. climate change attitudes/survey year and respondent sex or political party identification) compared to Figure1 (i.e. climate change attitudes/survey year). Estimates based upon the smaller sample size in Figures 2 and 3 result in, for example, overall 70 per cent of the sample accepting anthropogenic climate change in 2022, while after losing cases, 71 per cent of men and 72 per cent of women accepted anthropogenic climate change in Figure 2). ↩︎
5. Political party identification was measured with the question: “Do you usually think of yourself as close to any particular political party and, if yes, which party is that?” Responses shown are for the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party and National Party combined; the Australian Greens, and those who do not see themselves as close to any political party. ‘Other’ responses were excluded from these analyses. ↩︎