Abstract
Public support is fundamental in scaling up actions to limit global warming. Here, we analyse how the experience of climate extremes influences people’s environmental attitudes and willingness to vote for Green parties in Europe. To this end, we combined high-resolution climatological data with regionally aggregated, harmonized Eurobarometer data (34 countries) and European Parliamentary electoral data (28 countries). Our findings show a significant and sizeable effect of temperature anomalies, heat episodes and dry spells on environmental concern and voting for Green parties. The magnitude of the climate effect differs substantially across European regions. It is stronger in regions with a cooler Continental or temperate Atlantic climate and weaker in regions with a warmer Mediterranean climate. The relationships are moderated by regional income level suggesting that climate change experiences increase public support for climate action but only under favourable economic conditions. The findings have important implications for the current efforts to promote climate action in line with the Paris Agreement.
Highlights
Public support is fundamental in scaling up actions to limit global warming
We study the effect of increased experiences with climate extremes on environmental concern and analyze, for the first time, to what extent changes in concerns translate into actual political support for climate action in form of Green voting [7,8,9,10].We exploit time-series
The results suggest a stronger relevance of positive temperature extremes and heat-related events for environmental concerns and Green voting (Supplementary Figure S5)
Summary
Public support is fundamental in scaling up actions to limit global warming. Here, we analyze the impact of exposure to climate extremes on environmental concern and Green voting for 29 and 24 European countries, respectively. The relationships are moderated by regional GDP suggesting that climate change experiences increase public support for climate action but only under favorable economic conditions. One-Sentence Summary: Exposure to climate extremes influences green concern and voting with regional variation across climatic and economic conditions. To fulfil its commitments under the Paris Agreement, the EU has pledged to cut at least 40% of its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels while striving to achieve at least a 32% share for renewable energy by 2030 3 This requires radical transformations in production and consumption involving all sectors ranging from energy to land and agriculture, transport, buildings, industry and waste management. To achieve this transition, a broad support by the public is crucial
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