OTTAWA — Climate change has jumped dramatically on the scale of Canadians' worries over the last year and most people want the government to meet Kyoto targets, according to an environmental poll.

Global warming is second place as a top-of-mind environmental issue, next only to air quality, says McAllister Opinion Research, an international firm known for its research on environmental issues.

That means it was cited with the second-greatest frequency when people were asked, without prompting, to name the most important environmental issue in a poll conducted in July.

Concern seems to have reached a tipping point and the Conservatives neglect the issue at their peril, said Angus McAllister, president of the company which does research for government agencies, corporations and non-profit groups.

The federal government has been promising to release a major environmental plan this fall, but it is not clear whether the package will include a plan for climate change, or just a promise of consultations.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international pact to cut greenhouse emissions that cause global warming, and federal officials suggest their top priority is air and water quality, not climate.

McAllister's poll suggests that the great majority of Canadians don't agree with that stance. It found that 77 per cent believe Canada should meet or exceed its Kyoto targets for cutting emissions.

More than 90 per cent of Canadians said climate change will be a serious problem if not addressed, and 75 per cent believe that a "good amount" or a "great deal" can be done to fight the problem.

"Silence is not a good idea on this issue because there's a lot of anxiety out there," McAllister said in an interview Tuesday.

"Canadians are looking for moral leadership and they see the centre is silent which makes them even more anxious.

"It's like when you're flying in a plane and there's smoke coming out of the engines and nobody's saying anything."

In the poll, the most frequently named environmental issues were air quality (35 per cent), global warming (20 per cent), water quality (12 per cent) and nature conservation (six per cent).

In July 2005, only seven per cent of those interviewed named global warming as the top environmental issue, putting it in fourth place after air quality (35 per cent), water quality (17 per cent) and nature conservation (13 per cent).

McAllister said there has been a resurgence of concern about environmental issues in general, after a long period in the '90s when they virtually disappeared from the "top of mind" list.

He said environment is now at the top of the list in Quebec while in the rest of Canada it is third place after health and governance, but rapidly moving into second place.

Both polls were based on samples of 1,500 people and are considered accurate within 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.