It’s easy to assume that Canadian conservatives are uniformly opposed to climate action, especially if you listen to political leaders like BC Conservative Party leader John Rustad or Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. But new data tells a different story: a majority of conservatives support taking action to address climate change.
Using an original survey administered to a nationally representative sample of Canadian households in summer 2024, my co-authors and I found that while our left-wing respondents were extremely uniform in their strong support for climate policies, our right-wing respondents were far more mixed than we had expected, based on previous research and public discourse. While about a third of the conservatives we surveyed opposed climate policy, over a third were supportive, and more conservatives supported climate policy than opposed it.
Our measure of support for climate policy combined three survey questions:
- To what extent do you believe governments in Canada should do more to address climate change?
- To what extent do you support taxing companies based on their carbon emissions?
- To what extent do you support replacing fossil fuels with renewable energies?
Our measure of political ideology asked respondents to place themselves on a scale from 0 (extremely liberal, or left-wing) to 10 (extremely conservative, or right-wing), with 5 as a middle-of-the-road option.
Climate views on the right are more diverse than you think
Many reports on climate policy attitudes report averages, as in, ‘on average, liberals are more supportive of climate policy than conservatives.’ These averages are accurate, but they also overlook a crucial aspect of the story—the distribution around those averages. And for climate communicators, it is the distribution, not the average, that points toward cross-partisan climate action.
Support for climate policies is high and uniform on the left. Support decreases with increasing conservativism, but so does the distribution around the average. The figure below plots a scale from 0 (strong opposition) to 18 (strong support) for climate policy support and 0 to 10 for political ideology. Liberals have very strong support for climate policy with only a handful of outliers (the dots depicted on the chart below). Moderates (5) also show strong support. Moving to the conservative half of the figure, we see that median support drops to 3.5 among extreme conservatives. But what we focus on is the considerable distribution around that median.
Why do some conservatives oppose climate policy?
Common reasons that researchers have proposed to explain conservative opposition to climate policy include:
- A tendency to be supportive of economic growth and capitalism, regardless of the consequences.
- The influence of political elites. When conservative elites oppose climate policy, ordinary people may follow suit.
- Conservatives are more likely to distrust governments and scientists, key institutional actors in the design and deployment of climate policy.
In our study, we wanted to retain a focus on trust in science. We also wanted to expand this existing set of explanations into new territory. Specifically, we examined how liberals and conservatives feel about one another, and how those feelings relate to attitudes toward climate policy.
Affective polarization means that people strongly trust and feel positive toward their own political side, while at the same time distrusting and disliking those on the opposite side. We measured affective polarization by asking respondents to indicate how warmly they felt toward liberals and conservatives on a scale from 0 to 100, with separate questions for each partisan group. We then calculated affective polarization as the difference between the in-group score minus the out-group score. We also asked respondents how much trust they have in science: a lot, some, not much, and not at all.
Feelings matter when it comes to attitudes to climate policy
Liking or disliking conservatives has no impact on left-wing respondents’ attitudes to climate policy—liberals strongly support these policies, independent of affective polarization. But on the right, we found a different story.
The most influential factor shaping how conservatives feel about climate policy is how they feel about liberals. Conservatives who strongly dislike and distrust liberals feel much more negatively about climate policy than those who like and trust liberals. In fact, affective polarization explained over half of the variation in conservative support for climate policy. The only other significant variables were distrust in science (which accounted for 13 per cent of the variation) and the region of Canada where the respondent lived, which accounted for 10 per cent of the variation. Overall, conservatives least supportive of climate policy tend to strongly dislike liberals, distrust scientists, and live in the Prairie provinces.
It’s time to tell a different story about conservatives and climate policy
Our study joins other recent advances to make clear that we need new narratives when we talk about political ideology and climate change. For example, a post-mortem analysis of the 2024 BC election revealed that support for climate policy increased support for all provincial parties, and that BC residents prefer leaders who are serious about addressing climate change. Re.Climate’s segmentation analysis of Canadians identifies a group of “Civic Nationals” who are conservative in their values and concerned about climate change. There are more conservatives who want to see serious climate action than oppose it.
What climate communicators can do next
What does this mean for climate communicators?
- Take time to reflect on your assumptions about conservatives. A driver of conservatives’ dislike of liberals is a sense of being unfairly and inaccurately judged, and that’s something every individual can begin to tackle immediately.
- The messenger matters. For conservatives who strongly dislike and distrust liberals, a left-wing coded appeal to support climate policy is likely to decrease rather than increase support.
- Listening is a crucial part of effective communication. Some conservatives feel that liberals are smug and judgmental when it comes to climate change. Listening is an essential tool for demonstrating humility and a willingness to compromise.
- Remind conservative political leaders that their constituents want action on climate change. Political leaders don’t always have the best data to inform their decisions. Our survey is rare in that it is nationally representative and based on probability sampling. High-quality data showing details on conservative support for climate policy is an important tool to communicate with conservative political parties and interest groups.
- Finally, coalitions, consensus, and cross-partisan support are essential for stable climate policy. When policies at any institutional scale are won at the expense of compromise and cross-partisan support, there is a strong risk of backlash.
Lasting progress on climate change doesn’t come from winning the argument; it comes from building broad support. That means listening carefully, speaking across lines of difference, and recognizing that conservatives are not the barrier to climate action — they are part of the solution.
Emily Huddart is a professor in the Department of Sociology at The University of British Columbia and the Principal Investigator of the project Describing, Explaining, and Disrupting Affective Climate Polarization in Canada. Emily is the author of Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment and Happy Meat: The Sadness and Joy of a Paradoxical Idea (with Josée Johnston, Shyon Baumann, and Merin Oleschuk).
We’re always looking for fresh voices to contribute to the Re.Frame blog. If you have insights, stories, or lessons on climate communications and engagement that could inspire or inform others, we’d love to hear them. Send us a short pitch at editor@reclimate.ca outlining your idea, why it matters, and what readers can take away.
