As negotiations in Copenhagen seem to take two steps back for every two steps forward, it’s easy for observers to despair about there being a policy solution to the world’s problems with climate change.
One issue continually in the news is that large fractions of people in the U.S. do not believe in climate change and, by implication, would not be willing to pay to reduce the emissions that cause it; another is the perceived fairness of how the economic burden of reducing greenhouse gases should be divided among countries.
Yet, despite these national-level opinion polls, little is directly known about the willingness to pay to avoid the consequences of climate change in the U.S. and whether it differs among countries. This willingness can be taken as a barometer of the strength of political support for costly mitigation actions.
Perceptions of a fair distribution of costs are also expected to differ strongly across countries. Historically large emitters such as the U.S. and Europe may prefer a system where obligations are expressed in terms of current rather than historical emissions. Rapidly industrializing countries, such as China, may prefer a system based on historical emissions. Countries such as India or most African countries may find both of these unfair and have a material interest in supporting equal allocations in terms of emissions per capita. However, despite these conjectures, it is unknown how important the rule is to the average citizen in different countries.
In a multinational effort, a team of researchers from China, Europe, and the U.S. addressed these issues with an identical survey that was developed and administered in each of these countries just prior to the Copenhagen meetings. The survey follows best practices in asking citizens for their willingness to pay to avoid the consequences of global temperature changes as forecasted by the IPCC. The survey also uses techniques adapted from product marketing approaches where citizens choose among various burden-sharing rules, given alternative costs to their household of implementing such rules.
The first wave of responses has been returned from the U.S. and Sweden. To avoid the consequences of climate change that would arise from a 4°F temperature increase, 91.5% of Swedish respondents and 71% of US respondents were willing to pay some amount of money. However Swedish respondents are willing to pay more, averaging $306/year versus $204/year for the U.S. sample. Respondents in both countries were willing to pay even more if temperature increases could be held to 3°F ($330/year in the U.S.; $552/year in Sweden) and more still to hold the increase at 2°F ($430/year in the U.S.; $756/year in Sweden).
As hypothesized, having a higher income education level increased respondents’ willingness to pay. Willingness was lower for those who believe that the temperature has not increased over the past 100 years, that humans did not cause climate change, and that climate change cannot be stopped. Religiosity had the opposite effect in the two countries; religious people had a lower willingness in the U.S. and a higher willingness in Sweden.
Swedish and American respondents saw eye to eye when it comes to who should foot the bill to address the problems. Preferences for four burden-sharing principles were examined by this study: distributing the costs among countries by levels of current emissions, historical emissions, income, and emissions per capita. Respondents from both nations ranked the principles in the same way in both nations. The current emissions principle—the least costly principle for the U.S. and second least costly principle for Sweden, as well as the one where the U.S. and China share costs about equally—clearly emerges as the most preferred. Respondents were willing to pay $16/year (Sweden) and $17/year (U.S.) more than for the next preferred principle, income. The third preferred principle is historical emissions, with emissions per capita least preferred.
Our results show that significant majorities of the public in the U.S. and, particularly, Sweden are willing to shoulder the cost burdens of climate mitigation—about 2% to 3% of their per capita income (or analogously, GDP)—to prevent a warming of more than 2°F. Furthermore, while the burden-sharing principles favorable to one’s own country are preferred, the willingness to pay for such a principle over others is small.
The Chinese survey is currently being administered and results are forthcoming.
Tiffany Clements is managing editor of Weathervane.
