A YouGov poll across six European countries — Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK — confirms what climate politics has quietly demonstrated for a decade: the belief gap is closed, the action gap is wide open. Between 69% (Germany) and 80% (France) of respondents accept human-made climate change is real. Denial runs at a negligible 1-4%. The question is no longer whether, but what anyone is willing to do about it. The poll's sharpest finding is the clean split between support for measures that impose costs on abstract entities versus those that touch personal consumption. Planting trees, subsidising energy efficiency, banning single-use plastics, and taxing big emitters all poll well. Increasing fuel duty, limiting meat and dairy, taxing air fares, and banning new petrol and diesel cars do not. The pattern is consistent across all six nations: externalize cost to industry and government budgets, resist any measure that shows up on a household receipt. Heatwaves appear to be a powerful but fleeting mobiliser. In France, the share saying they were "very worried" about the climate crisis surged from 28% in April to a record 42% by August, holding at that level into September. Germany saw a similar spike — 27% to 40% — but concern there has already fallen back to 31%. Denmark, whose summers were less extreme, showed flat concern throughout. The implication: worry tracks weather, not science, and dissipates as temperatures drop. Majorities of 79-89% across all six countries said international cooperation would be more effective than national action. Within the EU, 50-64% preferred climate decisions be made at the EU level rather than nationally, with Spain (64%) and Denmark (61%) most enthusiastic. This signals genuine appetite for supranational coordination — or, less charitably, a preference for someone else to set the rules. The most revealing data point may be the fatalism metric: only 11-24% believe it is already too late. A plurality of 45-63% think the worst can still be averted but only with drastic change. Yet when asked what drastic change they'd personally accept, cheap and easy steps like growing green space at home and eating seasonal produce scored well, while paying more for flights or shopping secondhand did not. The gap between "drastic change is needed" and "I will change drastically" is the defining tension of European climate politics. Days before Cop31 in Turkey, this poll is both a mandate and a warning. Policymakers have democratic permission to act — on tree planting, plastic bans, industrial carbon taxes, and efficiency subsidies. They do not have permission to touch fuel prices, dietary norms, or car ownership. Any serious decarbonisation pathway requires all of these levers. The politics remain stuck on the comfortable half of the menu. The 20-year risk is clear: a continent that agrees on the diagnosis, funds the painless prescriptions, and defers the structural ones until the cost of delay has compounded beyond what voluntary action can address. The belief is there. The willingness to sacrifice is not.
