Policies to address climate change have been historically difficult to implement.
The OECD and The Social Economics Lab at Harvard teamed up to understand why, and surveyed over 40000 respondents across 20 of the world’s most carbon-emitting countries (representing 72% of global CO2 emissions). By addressing citizen’s concerns, governments can help build public support for urgently needed climate action. [dedicated website]
Paper: Fighting climate change: International attitudes toward climate policies
Abstract: Using new surveys on more than 40 000 respondents in twenty countries that account for 72% of global CO2 emissions, we study the understanding of and attitudes toward climate change and climate policies. We show that, across countries, support for climate policies hinges on three key factors: the perceived effectiveness of the policies in reducing emissions, their perceived distributional impacts on lower-income households (inequality concerns), and their own household’s gains and losses. We also show that information that specifically addresses these key concerns can substantially increase the support for climate policies in many countries. Explaining how policies work and who can benefit from them is critical to foster policy support. Simply making people more worried about climate change is not an effective strategy to foster policy support. Furthermore, we identify several socioeconomic and lifestyle factors – most notably education, political leanings, car usage, and availability of public transportation – that are significantly correlated with both policy views and overall reasoning and beliefs about climate policies. Yet, it is difficult to predict beliefs or policy views based on these characteristics only.
Summarizing Twitter threads
With @ADechezlepretre, @S_Stantcheva, @BPlanterose, Ana Sanchez Chico and Tobias Kruse,
We surveyed climate attitudes in 20 countries covering 72% of global CO2 emissions.
In brief, people around the World want ambitious, global, and fair climate policies.
People support ambitious action but are pessimistic that we will succeed in halting climate change during this century.
World leaders: please prove them wrong!
Most policies are supported by a relative majority (i.e. support / (support + opposition) > 50%) ⬇️
Most popular national policies are:
– a green infrastructure program
– mandatory and subsidized insulation of buildings
– low-emission zones
Global measures are particularly popular.
Regarding the burden-sharing between countries, there is a consensus on the principle of an equal right to pollute for every human.
This suggest that governments should welcome demands for climate justice in international negotiations.
What explains the support for a given policy is its perceived self-interest, effectiveness (hence strong support for investments or global policies), and fairness (hence stronger support when a policy is completed with transfers to low-income people or taxes on the wealthiest).
Informing people of the impacts of climate change increases support for key climate policies, informing them about the functioning and effects of these policies boosts support even more.
Oorspronkelijk getweet door Adrien Fabre (@adrien_fabre) op 12 juli 2022.
Webinar Sept 15th 2022
International Attitudes toward Climate Policies
https://www.oecd.org/climate-change/international-attitudes-toward-climate-policies/
Pretty stringent inclusion criteria:
<11 minutes completion time is “incoherent and rushed”
Three key beliefs major predictors of public support:
1. Policy effectiveness
2. Inequality concern
3. Self-interest
Full Paper:
Climate impacts video (3 minutes, UK version):
https://lse.eu.qualtrics.com/WRQualtricsControlPanel/File.php?F=F_bj8yT5eiDpZCR82
Climate policy video (5 minutes, US version):
https://lse.eu.qualtrics.com/WRQualtricsControlPanel/File.php?F=F_bj5mFN15bJnlUbk
On why some countries were included:
Remarks by @camjhep
16% was excluded because they finished in less than 11 minutes.
Results do not substantially change once you include them, or if you exclude more people (<20 min)
“descriptive statistics and coefficients very close to our benchmark results”
Knowledge about climate change (in Denmark & Germany)
Oorspronkelijk getweet door Wilte Zijlstra (@wilte) op 15 september 2022.
Bonus tweet on what I learned during Webinar:
wilte 