UN poll: most teenagers believe there is a climate emergency

Survey of 1.2 million people in 50 countries shows young people are most worried about the climate crisis

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Teenagers in some of the world's top polluting nations are the strongest believers that there is a climate emergency, according to the largest opinion poll yet conducted on the subject.

Globally, 69 per cent of people under 18 believe that climate change is an emergency, compared with 58 per cent of those older than 60, according to a survey of 1.2 million people in 50 countries by the United Nations Development Program and the University of Oxford.

The study does not include China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

"Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought," said Stephen Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the study.

“We’ve also found that most people clearly want a strong and wide-raging policy response.”

Overall, 64 per cent of respondents believe global warming is an emergency and, of those, 59 per cent said an urgent response is needed.

Conserving land and forests, boosting renewable power and using climate-friendly farming techniques were the most favoured solutions.

Making companies pay for pollution garnered high support, especially in high-income countries.

The People's Climate Vote survey offers a rare insight into the generation of young people who in 2018 and 2019 led demonstrations around the world calling for climate action through platforms such as the Fridays for Future movement.

To reach them, the UN took an unconventional approach to polling by distributing the survey across mobile gaming networks.

A total of 1.22 million people took the survey, of whom 550,000 were under 18.

Young people in the UK and Italy were the most strongly convinced there is a climate emergency, with 86 per cent of respondents under 18 supporting the idea.

Fewer teenagers in Moldova (61 per cent), Kyrgyzstan (62 per cent), Sri Lanka (62 per cent) and Argentina (63 per cent) said climate change is an emergency.

But even then the difference with those older than 60 was about 20 percentage points in these countries.