Emotional Engine of Climate Intervention Support

A worldwide survey of over 30,000 individuals across 30 countries explores global sentiments on climate change and how these emotions influence views on and support for climate solutions. The findings are featured in Risk Analysis. ()

Climate Emotions

To investigate the intensity of “climate emotions” on a global scale and their intersection with perceptions of climate interventions, a team of researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria conducted an online survey in 19 different languages for adults in 30 countries. Responses were collected from August to December 2022.

In their data analysis, the team mapped the intensity of five “climate emotions” -- fear, hope, anger, sadness and worry -- across the 30 countries. Clear differences in climate emotions emerged across the world. Here are some of the findings:

• Among the 12 most hopeful countries about climate change, there were 11 developing and emerging economies of the Global South (including Nigeria, Kenya, India and Indonesia). The only country representing the Global North in this group was the United States.
• European countries ranked among the least hopeful -- including Germany, Austria, and Sweden. This is despite participants from these countries (and the Global North) reporting less direct experience with natural disasters and lower expected harm from climate change.
• Anger and sadness were expressed most strongly by participants in three southern European countries: Spain, Italy, and Greece.
• Participants in Brazil expressed the greatest degrees of both fear and worry with respect to climate change.

An important goal of the study was to explore the intersection between climate emotions and how people around the world feel about climate intervention technologies involving solar radiation modification (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). “In addition to types of climate action like mitigation and adaptation, climate intervention is receiving greater attention due to the greater evidence of climate disasters and insufficient pace of emissions reductions,” says Chad M. Baum, lead author of the study and Assistant Professor at the Development of Business Development and Technology at Aarhus University in Herning, Denmark.

He and his colleagues examined the statistical relationship between the five climate emotions and support for 10 different climate intervention technologies, including afforestation, direct air capture, and stratospheric aerosol injection.

Hope (expressed most strongly by respondents from the Global South) emerged as a key predictor of support for climate intervention, particularly for SRM approaches and novel forms of CDR, such as direct air capture. Being afraid was also positively related to support for climate-intervention technologies -- though with a smaller effect than being hopeful or worried. “Together with hope and worry, this suggests that fear, and its desire for protective action, is positively linked to support for more controversial forms of climate intervention,” says Baum.

“Our results,” he adds, “illustrate both the divergence of climate emotions at a global level and, crucially, the potential consequences of not engaging with diverse perspectives on climate change -- and some proposed solutions -- in the Global South.”

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Reference:

1. Survey finds support for climate interventions is tied to both hope and worry - (https://phys.org/news/2025-03-survey-climate-interventions.html)

Source-Eurekalert