30 September 2026 – A survey of more than 18,000 people in 18 countries finds that people see climate adaptation as a priority, whatever their politics, and as a way to accelerate the reduction of emissions.
More than 50 years ago, The Limits to Growth set out what the consequences of overshoot might be. Today we are living them. For those still with their heads in the sand, the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2026 was a terrifying and, for some, tragic awakening. Wildfires, droughts, heatwaves and floods hit rich economies with a force that poorer countries have long had to live with. From deadly events in China and Nepal to potatoes boiling in the ground in South Korea, the headlines were impossible to escape. Scientists at the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab project that more than 450,000 people could die from additional heat linked to the current super El Niño by February 2027, an event that experts say is being supercharged by climate change.
On the matter of climate impacts, the question is no longer whether or when, but rather what we do next.
The political establishment is finally engaging, not as ‘climate activists’ but in recognition that this is now everyone’s business. In her State of the Union address on 16 September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cited more than 35,000 additional heat deaths in Europe this summer. “This is not about mitigation or adaptation,” she said. “We need both.”
Even the climate naysayers are joining the chorus for action on adaptation, whatever they think of its causes. France’s National Rally cited the IPCC, long its bête noire, to argue for air conditioning, while governments in Argentina and the USA faced pressure from their own supporters to respond to extreme weather. You no longer have to accept the science to act on the weather.
The growing popular and political support for action on adaptation is frankly a relief — there is a desperate need to safeguard lives and livelihoods, today and into the future. Yet this welcome recognition comes with risks that also need to be managed. Inevitably, the core questions are who gets protected, who does not, and who pays the bill. For many climate activists, one of the most pressing concerns is making sure that adaptation does not detract, intentionally or otherwise, from efforts to reduce emissions.
New evidence suggests that adaptation could be a game-changer in driving popular and political engagement on climate, including on mitigation.
Morphosis and Vibe Fund, with support from the Climate Opinion Research Exchange, surveyed more than 18,000 people in 18 countries across six continents. Those countries are home to 55% of the world’s population and 71% of global GDP, making this one of the most extensive public polls on adaptation yet.
First, climate change has arrived where people live: in the household budget. Cost of living is the top concern across the 18 countries, and 72% expect climate change to push up prices in their country over the next five years. Almost half of those surveyed (45%) believe it will disrupt how they earn a living, rising to 64% in India and 70% in Kenya.
Climate has moved from the environment pages to the kitchen table.
Concern about climate impacts also cuts right across the political spectrum. Three in four people are worried, and denial barely registers at 3%, even among supporters of climate-sceptic parties. Net zero may still divide societies, but preparing for what is already here does not.
Politicians of all parties and persuasions will have to become adaptation advocates.
Most striking, and unexpected for some, is that people do not see a trade-off between adaptation and mitigation. In fact, more than half of those surveyed (53%) believe that acting on adaptation will make efforts to cut emissions more ambitious, against fewer than a third (31%) who think it will make them less so. In every country surveyed, more people expect adaptation to raise ambition than to lower it.
Adaptation could be a powerful accelerator of action on mitigation.
People are clear about who should lead, and clear that they are being let down. Two-thirds want their government to do more to help their country adapt, rising to 92% in Kenya and 88% in South Africa. Yet 56% say their government has no clear plan, and majorities in 16 of the 18 countries agree. Business is expected to step up on new technologies. Readers can compare the results for every country on our adaptation polling page.
Here lies the systemic challenge. Across the G20 countries we surveyed, demand for new adaptation technologies is higher in middle-income members than in richer ones (63% against 57%). Yet people in middle-income countries are less likely to look to business to provide them. Where the need is deepest, the route to market is least commercial. Left to markets alone, adaptation will flow to those who can already pay, deepening the inequalities that make every transition harder.
That is why adaptation should be treated not as a bill to be paid after each disaster, but as an economy to be built. Affordable cooling powered by household renewables, better-insulated homes, secure water and food, resilient public health systems: these protect people from climate impacts and cut emissions at the same time. Designed well, they create decent jobs and reach the low- and middle-income households who need them most. The same thinking underpins Morphosis’s Adaptation Economy Index.
The risk is that we get the opposite. Responses to climate impacts could fall victim to headline politics, leaving politicians and businesses acting in fragmented, ad hoc ways. Worse, adaptation could be weaponised, set against climate action rather than woven into it.
Societies can change course fast when slow-building vulnerabilities become losses that cannot be deferred, as they did after the 2008 financial crisis and during COVID-19. Extreme weather could be that kind of turning point for climate action, if we choose to make it one.
Making that choice requires an informed public debate across countries, generations and political persuasions. It also means supporting the most vulnerable, at home and abroad, well beyond emergency response. It means creating the economic conditions for affordable solutions that also cut emissions. And it means balancing short-term fixes with building decent jobs for the future.
The Club of Rome has always argued that systems, not symptoms, are what need to change. Adaptation is now part of that system. The task for this network is to make sure it is designed into the transformation, not treated as a detour from it. With the super El Niño underway, 2027 is likely to bring more extreme weather. We have months, not years, to prepare.
Explore the country-by-country results and read the full report, When climate hits home, on the Morphosis adaptation polling page. The data can also be explored by question and demographic group on the Climate Opinion Research Exchange platform. For more on the economics of adaptation, see the Adaptation Economy Index.
A related version of this article was first published by Project Syndicate.
