A new report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication offers a plethora of insights on the attitudes of the Indian public toward climate change, including "current public climate change awareness, beliefs, attitudes, policy support, behavior, and self-reported vulnerability to extreme weather events." Notably, 84% of respondents, presented with a short definition of global warming, said that they thought that global warming is happening.
Told "Global warming refers to the idea that the world's average temperature has been increasing over the past 150 years, may be increasing more in the future, and that the world's climate and weather patterns may change as a result" and asked "What do you think? Do you think that global warming is happening?" 84% of respondents agreed that global warming is happening, while 11% disagreed and 6% said that they didn’t know or offered no answer.
Asked "If global warming is happening, do you think that it is caused mostly by human activities, by natural changes in the environment, some other cause, or none of these because it is not happening?" 54% of respondents chose human activities, while 36% chose natural changes in the environment, 1% chose some other cause, 2% chose none of these because it is not happening, and 7% either indicated they didn't know or offered no answer.
The survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 5427 Indian adults between December 4, 2025, and February 5, 2026. The survey (which was translated into 12 different languages) was administered via mobile telephone using predictive dialing technology and computer-assisted telephone interviewing. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 1.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
