The climate decade: Changing attitudes on three continents

The climate decade: Changing attitudes on three continents

ÅSA LÖFGREN AND THOMAS STERNER

Despite rising global temperatures and increased political awareness of the impacts of climate change, there is still no clear sign of emissions curbing on a global scale. But how have the past 10 years changed international opinions regarding stronger climate policy actions?

The last decade can surely be called the ‘Climate Decade’. While increases in global temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide emissions have set new records during the last decade, effective political action has proven elusive. Despite strong scientific evidence of the risks of continued warming and the substantial progress made with renewable energy, there has been only weak overall progress towards a coherent set of global climate policies. The only signature result has been the 2015 Paris Agreement. Willingness to pay and political polarization Within the Mistra Carbon Exit program, we have examined whether the emerging warning signs over the last decade indicating earth warming are matched by citizens’ demands for stronger policy actions in three key geographic areas: the United States, China, and Europe (represented by Sweden). These three countries reflect very different climate policy contexts, differences that may be reflected in citizens’ attitudes towards climate policies and in their willingness to pay (WTP) for climate mitigation. We have addressed three important issues in the study: (i) how much citizens are willing to pay for reducing CO2 emissions; (ii) whether citizens’ WTP has changed over the past decade; and (iii) whether political polarization has increased or decreased when it comes to opinions regarding climate policies and preferences for decreasing CO2 emissions.

Demand for stronger policy actions in all countries Our results show that the warning signs that have appeared increasingly over the last decade indicating that the earth is warming are in fact matched by increased demands for stronger policy actions from citizens in all three countries. Some of the most important results are illustrated in the graph, including details of the WTP per tonne of reduction in CO2 emissions and how the WTP has changed over the past decade.

However, within countries, there is considerable preference divergence, most importantly in relation to political affiliation. We find a clear ideological left-right division in the demand for stronger climate policy action in both the United States and Sweden. Therefore, while we see convergent tendencies across countries, there is some evidence of increased divergence within countries.

Literature

Fredrik Carlsson, Mitesh Kataria, Alan Krupnick, Elina Lampi, Åsa Löfgren, Ping Qin, Thomas Sterner, Xiaojun Yang, The climate decade: Changing attitudes on three continents, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2021, 102426, ISSN 0095-0696. Carlsson, F., Kataria, M., Lampi, E., Löfgren, Å., Sterner, T. ”Ökat stöd för kraftfull klimatpolitik”. 2021-01-19, Svenska Dagbladet