The governments of wealthy countries are at odds with their citizens in decision-making about climate action, a new analysis suggests. The disconnect leaves an open goal for right-wing populists who oppose climate action to exploit, says Heinz Welsch, an environmental economist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, who carried out the research.
Past studies have investigated what factors determine the ambitiousness of emissions reduction pledges that countries make as part of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, but among the potential factors, citizen preferences have gotten relatively little attention. Other research has looked at what motivates people to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the climate or the environment more generally.
In the new study, Welsch brings these two strands of research together. He first gathered data about 2021 Paris Agreement emissions reduction pledges made by 123 nations around the world. He analyzed this information in relation to data from 130,000 people across 125 nations who participated in the 2021-22 Global Climate Change Survey.
Both the ambitiousness of national emissions reduction pledges and citizens’ willingness to pay for climate action vary by country – but in opposite directions, Welsch reports in the journal Environmental Economics.
The governments of countries with high per-capita incomes and high per-capita emissions tend to make ambitious emissions reduction pledges. This is in line with fairness principles: countries that have contributed the most to historical emissions and that are most able to pay for climate action should make the strongest efforts.
But citizens of countries with high per-capita incomes and emissions are also the least willing to pay for climate action. These countries had lower percentages of people who said in the Global Climate Change Survey that they would be willing to give up 1% of their income for the sake of reducing emissions, a finding that Welsch calls “troublesome and surprising.”
Temperature is also an important predictive factor, Welsch found. Countries with colder climates tend to set more ambitious climate targets, but citizens there – somewhat insulated from the negative effects of climate change – are less willing to contribute financially than citizens in hotter countries that feel the brunt of climate change.
All of this suggests that cost-benefit considerations underlie citizens’ willingness to pay for climate action, Welsch concludes.
The findings suggest that citizen support doesn’t shape government climate pledges. In fact, in high-emitting nations governments and citizens are making decisions about climate action based on completely different principles.
And this discrepancy creates a risk for climate action and for democracy itself. Welsch analyzed data from the twice-a-year Eurobarometer survey in 28 European countries and found that the bigger the discrepancy in a country between government climate targets and willingness of citizens to contribute to climate action, the lower the proportion of people who are satisfied with the functioning of that country’s democracy.
It’s unlikely that the difference between government climate targets and citizens’ climate action preferences is actually the cause of dissatisfaction with democracy, Welsch argues. But the dissatisfaction does mean that right-wing populists opposed to climate action could use ambitious climate targets to fuel backlash and gain support.
One way to resolve the conflict, Welsch suggests, is to combine ambitious climate efforts with policies that minimize the impact on less wealthy segments of society, such as by redistributing revenues from a carbon tax.
Source: Welsch H. “Are national climate change mitigation pledges shaped by citizens’ mitigation preferences? Evidence from globally representative data.” Ecological Economics 2025.
Image: © Skypixel| Dreamstime.com
