What the evidence shows

This is a six-country public opinion study examining how Europeans think and feel about climate change, and what obstacles stand between broad public concern and political action.

It's part of More in Common's "Navigating Uncertainty" project, which focuses on social division and polarization. It is framed through that lens: how does climate change interact with trust, division, and other competing priorities.

The report combines large-scale quantitative polling with qualitative focus group research across France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK. It also draws on More in Common's pre-existing national segmentation studies to connect climate attitudes to broader psychographic groupings, such as "Disengaged" or "Detached" segments.

The report's stated goal is practical: to help civil society organizations, the Green movement, and policymakers understand what's blocking climate action despite high public concern, and to offer three evidence-based recommendations for how to build broader coalitions and move policy forward.

Key Findings

• Climate concern spans generations, not just youth: 79% of Europeans on average are "somewhat" or "very worried" about climate change, with older generations (55+) matching or exceeding younger generations (18–29) in concern, personal responsibility, and desire for a green future in most countries studied.

• There's a gap between belief and confidence: 68% believe climate change is real and human-caused, and two-thirds want governments to act regardless of what other countries do — but only 13% believe international efforts are succeeding, and just 27% expect environmental policies will personally make their lives better.

• Trust is highly uneven by institution type: no country shows a majority trusting its national government or head of government, and more than three-quarters distrust journalists in many countries — but trust is comparatively higher in local government, teachers, doctors, police, and small businesses.

• Climate change is rarely the top political priority anywhere studied: it ranked among the top three national issues only in Germany (37%, second place) among the six countries; elsewhere it competes with cost of living, COVID-19, jobs, and (in Poland) the Belarusian border crisis.

Stand out data points

• 13%: share of Europeans who believe international climate diplomacy efforts (e.g., COP) are succeeding more than failing.

• 30% vs. 14%: rate of climate scepticism among those who completely distrust COVID-19 vaccine safety vs. those who completely trust it, illustrating the link between general institutional distrust and climate doubt.

• 87%: share of Poles who agree Poland should invest in renewables for energy independence, despite only 63% believing climate change is human-caused — showing energy security can motivate climate action independent of climate belief.

Examples of how Understories uses this research

• Actionability Supports flagging messages that don't specify local, tangible benefits (public transport, green space, local food) — the report found these concrete framings outperform abstract global appeals.

• Hope Doom Balance Supports flagging messages that only cite the scale of the threat without a credible efficacy story — given how low confidence in institutional solutions is, messages should pair urgency with reasons to believe change is achievable.

• Personal relevance Directly supports scoring messages by whether they translate climate policy into visible, everyday impacts (commuting, shopping, home costs) rather than distant or abstract framing.

• Accountability Fieldwork is from late 2021–mid 2022, capturing a period shaped heavily by the Ukraine invasion and the resulting energy price crisis; some findings (e.g., openness to energy independence from Russia) may be time-bound to that geopolitical moment and should be reassessed as circumstances evolve. The cost-of-living context specifically may already look different depending on when this report is used.

• Non maleficence The report's recommendation to avoid pairing climate with "controversial or obscure" social justice issues carries real tension: it's a tactical finding about what currently polls well, not a normative claim about what's just.

— non-exhaustive.

Key quote

On the report's strategic recommendation for issue-pairing: advocates should pair climate solutions "with popular or urgent policies, especially ones that address economic and national security concerns," rather than with lower-salience social justice issues.

© 2022, More in Common. All rights reserved. 

Last update: 20 August 2026

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