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Research by Panu Pihkala sheds light on the vast array of climate emotions that people can feel in response to the climate crisis.
The paper details specific emotions (such as fear, dread, hope, loneliness, and embarrassment) while showing how these fit into broader emotional categories (e.g. surprise-related, threat-related, sadness-related, anxiety-related). Altogether, the work lists over 50 distinct types of emotion that people may experience in relation to climate change.
The ‘Climate Emotions Wheel’ brings together the more detailed work into a simple, accessible visualisation.
This open access research paper explains how emotions are key influences on the ways people think about climate change, and the actions they might take to address the climate crisis. It outlines how both positive and negative emotional communications can promote sustainable behaviours.
Emotions trigger ‘motivational tendencies’ that influence people’s ability to cope with different types of situations. For instance, fear can lead to defensive responses (such as fight, flight, or freeze), while sadness can result in seeking to change one’s personal circumstances.
Emotions also influence how we think about issues and evaluate responses – for instance, emotions like hope, fear or anger may influence our sense of risk from climate change, or how much control we feel in pursuing different types of actions.
In a survey of 10,000 children and young people (aged 16–25 years) across ten countries around the world (including the UK) found that:
Research by Climate Outreach with Loyal Nationals around COP26 pointed to scepticism about whether global leaders could genuinely be trusted to cooperate. Patriotic Loyal Nationals have a high level of concern about climate change, but are distrustful of government, big business and major ‘multilateral’ political meetings like COPs.
Climate Outreach report that Loyal Nationals are cynical about whether UK leadership is achievable at COP26, and are sceptical that leaders can genuinely cooperate and represent their people, concluding that:
Engagement needs to counter the fact that many people do not understand what COP is about, and when they do they are often sceptical about what it could achieve, or believe it should be conducted online rather than in person.
Polling by Global Scan, which carried out surveys in 31 countries ahead of COP26, found that:
Research by the Development Engagement Lab found that around the time of COP26, held in Glasgow:
Grounded in More in Common’s ‘Britain’s Choice’ audience segmentation, Britain Talks Climate provides insights and guidance on how to engage the seven segments that span the breadth of British society.
The two ‘Disengaged’ segments are the least likely to engage in low-carbon behaviours, although they are also likely to have among the lowest carbon footprints.
Civic Pragmatists regularly give to charity, are highly involved in their local community and engage in a range of ‘personal’ low-carbon behaviours
Progressive Activists are the most likely to engage in a range of low-carbon behaviours
Taking action may be crucial in shaping how we think and feel about climate change, according to this open access research paper. By carrying out climate actions people may ‘self-persuade’ – building up a sense of confidence, or ‘agency’, to carry out further climate actions. As Kris De Meyer and colleagues write:
“our actions change our beliefs, awareness and concerns through a process of self-justification and self-persuasion. As one action leads to another, this process of self-persuasion can go hand in hand with a deepening engagement and the development of agency—knowing how to act.
Due to this persuasion-through-action effect, storytelling can play a key role, as we can pick up this confidence to act from other people too:
“One important source of agency is learning from the actions of others. We therefore propose an approach to climate communication and storytelling that builds people’s agency for climate action by providing a wide variety of stories of people taking positive action on climate change.”
Research conducted as part of Climate Outreach’s Britain Talks Climate work shows clear differences between segments of the UK population in terms of their opinions and preferences around food and climate change.
For instance, ‘Progressive Activists’ (vocal, passionate and politically active, but despairing about how the Government has tackled climate change) are the only segment to show majority support for reducing their meat and dairy intake as a personal step on climate change. They were also the only segment in favour of taxing meat and dairy products.
On the other hand, ‘Backbone Conservatives’ (patriotic, conservative and optimistic, skeptical of symbolic lifestyle changes and deeply caring about food, farming and the rural economy) showed limited interest in reducing their own meat and dairy intake. They showed very little enthusiasm for vegetarianism and none for veganism. However, they are positive towards ‘common sense’ ethical actions such as buying local, eating seasonally, reducing food waste and supporting British farmers.
‘Disengaged Battlers’ (broadly supportive of the need to tackle climate change, but feel unrepresented and are too busy surviving day-to-day to give environmental issues more of their attention) show strong support for penalising brands that use excessive or difficult-to- recycle plastic packaging (76%), and for setting targets for supermarkets to reduce food waste (80%).
Four years of CAST polling data shows trends among different audiences. Older age groups, men and those who lean Centre or Right politically are generally less willing to reduce their meat consumption. No clear pattern was found for income or rural vs urban residents.
A key headline message from the Britain Talks Climate toolkit (grounded in the Britain’s Choice audience segmentation) is that climate change is currently not a polarised issue for Britons, with majorities of all segments saying that it is an issue for everyone, regardless of income, background or politics.
New research highlights the need for people to feel empowered to prepare for and respond to climate impacts.
The research, which included interviews with flood victims, climate communication experiments, and a nationally representative survey about climate impacts found it was crucial for people to feel empowered to carry out adaptation, and believe that their behaviours will make a difference (‘efficacy’).
“In particular, [there was a] consistent influence of efficacy beliefs on climate adaptation behaviours, going beyond past work to show that different types of efficacy (self, response and collective) influence responses at personal, policy and broader social levels.”
These ‘efficacy beliefs’ were crucial to promoting climate-resilient behaviours. That means that it’s important people feel personally able to take actions, feel that climate actions will work, and believe that working together with other people will help to bring about changes.
Cardiff University survey data shows an increase in risk perceptions around hot and dry weather from 2013 to 2019.
In 2013 only 23% of respondents thought heatwaves were a fairly or very serious problem. By 2019 this had increased substantially to 72% – although concern flooding is still greater.
Flooding was considered a fairly or very serious problem by almost all survey respondents (90%), closely followed by coastal erosion (88%), heavy storms (84%) and periods of heavy rainfall (83%).
The authors note that the “increase in perceptions of heat risks might be partly explained by personal experiences of heat related events (such as discomfort due to hot weather) – in the current survey 70% reported having this experience – as well as media coverage of recent heat-related events in the UK and worldwide.”
In a report that offers a critical evaluation of the Heatwave Plan for England, survey data shows that most people – including those who are most vulnerable – don’t tend to see themselves as being at risk from heat. The authors write:
Most people had positive views of hot weather, and for many it was something they looked forward to as it invoked feelings of good health and well-being. In addition, most adults did not feel that hot weather posed a risk to themselves. As a result, protective measures were often not taken, even those that people felt were effective, such as staying out of the heat and in the shade.
Only 40% of participants aged 75 or older saw themselves personally at risk of hot weather. According to many of those interviewed, risk was associated with physical and mental frailty, not age itself, and there was some resistance, even resentment, to any ‘vulnerable’ label that may be applied to them in this context, as they did not consider themselves ‘frail’.
The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) have published a survey showing MPs overestimate public opposition to onshore wind power. They report:
Just 8% of Members of Parliament know that onshore wind farms are now the cheapest way to add electricity generating capacity in the UK. For comparison, 12% believe that large nuclear power stations, like Hinkley Point C, provide the cheapest new capacity.
The poll also shows that MPs consistently overestimate opposition to onshore wind. The most recent Government survey shows that just 2% of the population strongly opposes the technology – but only 9% of MPs think that the figure is less than 5%. Over half of MPs (52%) believe the level of strong opposition to be above 20%.