Vote Compass: Most feel government should do more to combat climate change

While environmental issues have received relatively little oxygen from the main candidates this election campaign, results from Vote Compass suggest many people feel the government should be more aggressive in addressing climate change.

• Vote Compass: Economy and environment rate as top issues
• Vote Compass: Where do you stand?

A large majority believe the government should do more toreducegreenhouse gas emissions while a smaller majority is open to putting a price on carbonto protect the environment,according to the latest findings from Vote Compass, CBC's voter-engagement tool.

The findings are based on 632,005 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from Aug. 29 to Oct. 11.

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Eighty per cent of respondents overall said the government should do more to reduce GHGs. Only four per cent said Canada should be doing less, while 15 per cent thought the country was doing enough as is. One per cent of respondents didn't have an opinion.

The Vote Compass data seems to suggest the impulse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions crosses party lines.

Predictably, Green Party supporters were most in favour of greater measures to reduce GHG emissions(94 per cent), followed closely by supporters of the Bloc Qubcois (93 per cent), NDP (92 per cent) and the Liberals (89 per cent). Conservative-identifying voters were less enthusiastic, but still in favour of greater measures (53 per cent).

Concerns about carbon pricing

Opinions were more divided on the issue of carbon pricing, which essentially means imposing a cost on individuals and corporations that emit greenhouse gases.

Many economists believe it is the most effective way of reducingGHGs.

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While 55 per cent of respondents agreed that Canada should impose a price on carbon, 21 per cent were neutral and 20 per cent disagreed. Six per cent had no opinion.

Responses were even more polarized along party lines.

• The G7 and its 85year carbon pledge
• Carbon pricing by the provinces urged by economists

When asked whether Canada should put a price on carbon, 71 per cent of Green Party voters were in favour, followed by supporters of the NDP (67 per cent), Bloc Quebecois (66 per cent) and Liberals (64 per cent). Conservative voters were considerably less open to the idea, with only 29 per cent supporting the idea of a carbon tax.

Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, VoteCompass is a civic engagement application offered in Canada exclusively by CBC News.The findings above are based on 632,005 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from Aug. 29 to Oct. 11.

Unlike opinion polls,respondents to Vote Compass are not randomly selected. Similar to opinion polls,however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and havebeen weighted in order to approximate a representativesample. Vote Compassdata have been weighted by geography, gender, age, educational attainment,occupation, religion, religiosity and civic engagement to ensure the sample'scomposition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to censusdata and other population estimates.