Amid the emergence of “climate-conscious voters" around the world in response to global warming, it is analyzed that Korean voters are also affected by climate issues. Ahead of the general election on April 10th, people are paying attention to whether voters who are willing to “climate vote” can influence politics.

On January 22nd, Climate Political Wind, which participated in the Local Energy Lab and the Institute for Green Transformation, held a “2024 Climate General Election Meeting” at the Korea Press Center in Seoul. They announced the results of conducting the “2023 Climate Crisis Survey” on a total of 17,000 people, 1,000 in each of the 17 metropolitan cities and provinces nationwide. As a result of evaluating climate information awareness, climate crisis sensitivity, and climate voting tendency, the proportion of domestic climate-conscious voters was 33.5%.

In particular, 62.5% of all respondents said that if some candidate made a pledge to respond to the climate crisis in the upcoming 2024 general election, they would seriously consider voting even if their usual political views were different. In addition, 62.3% of the respondents said they would be “more interested in the candidate” with an attitude emphasizing response to the climate crisis.

In domestic politics, if there is a movement of climate-conscious voters, candidates for general elections will have no choice but to listen to the voters’ voice. However, it is questionable whether it will lead to effective policy competition. The current climate crisis policies of major domestic political parties do not seem to make much difference in their basic perception of the climate crisis. However there may be differences in positions between political parties over how to solve the climate crisis. Kim Soo-Jin (Prof. of Carbon Neutrality, Dankook University) said, “There is no active policy debate in the National Assembly over these specific issues. Policy competition between political parties over how to substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions, rather than verbal promises such as “We need to overcome the climate crisis” and “We need to expand renewable energy,” can only respond to the climate crisis.”

Ha Kyung-Ja (Prof. of Atmospheric Sciences, PNU) said, “In the case of Korea, it is important to ensure its implementation power because it has already declared Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) or carbon neutrality. Each political party is recruiting climate experts, but fundamentally, I don’t think it will be solved by this year’s election alone.” She continued, adding, “Continuous development and constant safety infrastructure must be established, and continuous safety infrastructure must be followed by thoughts of our safety, and the government must be able to pay for the budget and cost.”

Reporter Kim Tae-Yi

Translated by Kim Tae-Yi