Climate of the Nation 2020 Benchmark Report launched by The Hon. Matt Kean MP, NSW Minister for Energy & Environment.

Read the full report.

The annual Climate of the Nation benchmark report has tracked Australian attitudes on climate change for over a decade, since 2007.

The 2020 Climate of the Nation report, to be launched by The Hon. Matt Kean MP, the NSW Minister for Energy and Environment, finds that:

• After the devastating Black Summer bushfires, eight in ten Australians (82%) are concerned that climate change will result in more bushfires, up from 76% in 2019

• Vast majority of Australians (83%) want coal-fired power stations to be phased out
• Only 12% of Australians prefer investment in gas to power Australia’s economic recovery, while the majority of Australians (59%) prefer investment in renewables as a pathway for economic recovery
• Australians overestimate gas industry employment by a factor of 40x, believing, on average, that 8.2% of the workforce is in fossil gas mining when the reality is it represents just 0.2% of the Australian workforce
• Seven in ten Australians (71%) want Australia to be a global leader in finding solutions to climate change, a jump of 9 percentage points from 2019
• More than two in three Australians (68%) believe Australia should have a national target for net-zero emissions by 2050, including majority support across Coalition voters (59%), Labor voters (81%), Greens voters (90%), Other voters (65%).

The Australia Institute’s 2020 Climate of the Nation was launched by The Hon. Matt Kean MP via webinar, Wednesday 29 October 2020 at 11am.