The online Newspoll found 91 per cent of those surveyed want a shift from reliance on coal-fired power to renewable energy sources, points that 90 per cent of coalition voters agreed with.
"To start with, this was an online poll. It wasn't one where people were rung up and properly sampled, so I think we have to discount it to an extent because of that," Mr Howard told Sky News.
"However, it is natural, with all the focus of the last few days on climate change, everybody says `oh yes, we've got to do more'.
"We are doing a lot and it's very important that we don't overreact to the Stern report."
Mr Howard said no one could assert with any confidence that the doomsday scenarios painted in this week's Stern report, which said fixing the problem will cost the world trillions of dollars, were right or wrong.
"I agree that the science says that the globe is getting warmer, I agree that over time we've got to take measures in order to tackle that problem," he said.
Mr Howard also dismissed criticism from a member of his own nuclear review committee, Professor Warwick McKibbin, who was reported today in the Australian Financial Review as saying the government was wrong to reject a carbon emissions trading scheme, as proposed by the Labor states and by the Kyoto agreement.
"I respect Professor McKibbin a great deal but the difficulty as I see it with that approach is that, in order to preserve our comparative advantage, we'd have to in some way exempt our coal exports and our other resource exports," he said.
"If we did that we might run the risk of imposing a disproportionately heavy burden on our domestic consumers, which could result in even higher electricity prices."
Eighty percent want Kyoto signed
Massive support for a change in direction on tackling climate change, as reflected in a voter poll, shows Prime Minister John Howard is out of touch, say the Australian Democrats.
The online Newspoll, published today, found 79 per cent of Australians want the government to sign the Kyoto Protocol and commit to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the poll was a damning indictment of Mr Howard's leadership.
"Today's Newspoll results on climate change commissioned by Greenpeace reveals how out of touch the prime minister is with Australians and his own constituency," Senator Allison said in a statement.
"The Newspoll results prove that the prime minister has been arrogant and ignorant in dealing with the climate change crisis."
She said Mr Howard consistently argued that Australians were not prepared to pay more for their energy, yet 75 per cent of voters, including coalition voters, say they are prepared to do so.
"The Newspoll result is a damning indictment on the prime minister's leadership.
"Clearly the prime minister has spent too much time pandering to the coal industry and not enough time listening to his constituents."
Campbell: ‘Poll no surprise’
Environment Minister Ian Campbell says he isn't surprised the majority of Australians believe more needs to be done to fight climate change.
He says Australians are becoming more concerned about climate change because they're starting to see it affecting their lives with things like water restrictions.
But Mr Campbell says many of the government's efforts on climate change are being ignored by the media.
He's told ABC radio the government's working hard to address global warming with this week alone handing over hundreds of million dollars on programs.