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Limiting climate change requires research on climate action

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 759–761 (2018)Cite this article

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To realize ambitious climate targets, research should focus more on effective ways to encourage rapid and wide-scale changes in climate mitigation actions, and less on understanding climate change beliefs.

Despite this, people generally do not consistently engage in actions that would reduce climate change2,3. Thus, the main challenge is not that many people do not believe in the reality and anthropogenic origins of climate change, but that these beliefs do not persistently translate into climate mitigation actions4. The latter is particularly troublesome, as recent integrated assessment modelling studies reveal that rapid and wide-ranging changes in individual climate mitigation actions are needed to limit climate change to 1.5 °C, particularly if we do not want to employ negative-emissions technologies that are associated with significant limitations and uncertainties5,6. It is therefore critical to focus our research efforts on understanding which factors and strategies encourage rapid and significant climate mitigation actions across the world.

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Fig. 1: Belief in the reality of climate change.
Fig. 2: Beliefs about the causes of climate change.
Fig. 3: Preferences for energy sources in electricity production.

References

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Acknowledgements

I thank T. Bouman for his help with the data analyses, and S. Johnson-Zawadzki for feedback on a draft version of the paper. The module ‘Public attitudes to climate change, energy security, and energy preferences’ of Round 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS8) was developed by W. Poortinga, G. Böhm, S. Fisher, L. Steg and L. Whitmarsh.

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  1. Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Linda Steg

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Steg, L. Limiting climate change requires research on climate action. Nature Clim Change 8, 759–761 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0269-8

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