Katya Rhodes and Chris Bell Publish in Energy Policy Journal
The study is open access and has direct implications for Canada’s political economy of climate policy, including carbon pricing.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421524004506#bib75
Do economic trade-offs matter in climate policy support? Using representative survey data in the UK and Australia, my new study published in Energy Policy concludes:
* past emission reductions successes (UK) or failures (AU) don't matter for climate policy support,
* higher awareness of carbon pricing leads to higher opposition in the UK,
* citizens will oppose climate policies if they believe the policies negatively affect the economy regardless of their actual impact, and
* optimistic beliefs over future economic growth and emissions reduction matter the most for climate policy support.
Governments should therefore redirect their efforts from promoting climate policy as an important lever to address climate change to communicating observed and future economic and social benefits of decarbonization in general, ideally avoiding all carbon pricing discussions.
Bravo to all co-authors, including the lead author and recent MPA graduate, Chris Bell, as well as Zoe Long and Colette Salemi!