Awareness of climate change and its impacts is not enough to move people to action.
Awareness of climate change and its impacts is not enough to move people to action. New research on how people’s worldviews affect their perceptions and actions could help policymakers and activists reframe the discussion around climate change mitigation.
Despite a very high level of awareness of climate change and its impacts, people are often hesitant to take action to change their behavior, according to a new study published in the journal Energy and Environment.
In 2015, nations agreed to limit climate change to “well below 2°C” to avoid the worst impacts. However, in order to achieve this climate change mitigation goal, current national targets must be significantly strengthened. This requires support from the public for policy changes, which includes not only acceptance of an energy transition, but also willingness to use and to pay for renewable energy sources as well as to actively engage in an energy transition. It also requires individual behavior changes in personal consumption of energy, food, and transportation.
“The major aim of this paper was to understand how awareness about the need for climate change mitigation could be turned into action,” says IIASA researcher Nadejda Komendantova, who led the study.
Read more at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
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