Bruce Stokes :
As European negotiators gather in Paris to attempt to hammer out a deal at the COP21 climate change summit, they have strong support (87 percent) from the European public to sign an accord that will limit national greenhouse gas emissions.
This figure includes support from 91 percent of Spaniards, 89 percent of Italians and even 63 percent of Poles. By comparison, 83 percent of the Japanese, 71 percent of the Chinese and 69 percent of Americans back an accord at COP21.But Europeans do differ in their assessments of the severity of the issue and their level of concern for global climate change trails behind poorer nations’. On the politically charged issue of whether rich countries should do more to mitigate the effects of climate change than developing nations, Europeans show themselves far more willing than the Americans and the Japanese to place the burden on wealthy nations.
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey that polled more than 45,000 people in 40 countries, a global median of 54 percent think climate change is a very serious problem. In Europe, an equal proportion agreed, although the British (41 percent) and the Poles (19 percent) are substantially less concerned. According to our research, Poles are among the least concerned about global warming.
European concern about climate change is greater than in the U.S., where 45 percent see it as a very serious problem, and in China, where only 18 percent express a similar level of concern. But Europeans are far from the most worried around the world: 74 percent of Latin Americans and 61 percent of Africans polled expressed intense concern about global warming.
Europeans’ commitment to tackling global warming is also personal. Strong majorities across the EU countries surveyed said they would consider major changes in the way they live as a means of dealing with the effects of climate change. More than 83 percent in France, 77 percent in Spain, 75 percent in Germany, 70 percent in Italy, and 67 percent in the U.K. agree that they’ll have to change their lifestyle. The Poles, at 49 percent, are less sure changes to lifestyle are key to combatting climate change. This compares with 66 percent of Americans, 58 percent of Chinese and 53 percent of Japanese who acknowledge that people will have to adapt.
The question of who should ramp up their efforts to deal with global warming will likely prove as contentious an issue in Paris as it was at the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. “We hope advanced nations will assume ambitious targets and pursue them as they have the most room for impact,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told delegates in Paris.
A median of 56 percent in Europe agree. They say rich countries – such as Japan, Germany and the U.S. – should shoulder more of the burden than developing nations because they are responsible for most of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere. Support for this view is strongest in Poland (61 percent), where many respondents were likely influenced by the fact that Poland is not a rich nation, while next-door neighbor Germany is. The lowest support is in the U.K., where only 49 percent agree that the rich should do more to fight climate change than developing nations.
On this issue, Europeans differ with their Japanese and American counterparts, both of whom tilt toward saying they want developing nations to rise to the occasion as well. This could yet prove a problem in the negotiations.
In a number of key countries involved in the Paris negotiations, the young are far more supportive of rich countries taking on a greater role in dealing with climate change. In the U.S., young Americans (51 percent) are far more likely to hold this position than older Americans (34 percent). A similar generation gap exists in Japan (45 percent to 31 percent) and in Australia (55 percent to 45 percent).
In Germany and France, the trend is reversed. There, the older generation (65 percent in Germany, 60 percent in France) is much more likely to support the idea that rich nations should lead the fight against climate change than the younger generation (47 percent in Germany, and 44 percent in France). German and French officials believe this may reflect a particularly internationally minded consciousness common in the generation that grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, and not as prevalent in among younger countrymen.
Whether the nations assembled in Paris will be able to reach an agreement on a climate change deal is not yet clear. But we do know that European negotiators have the public support to do so. Most European publics are willing to see rich nations do more than developing countries, which could ease agreement with nations from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Whether this will be sufficient to bridge differences between European and American and Japanese points of view remains to be seen.
(Bruce Stokes is the director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Center.)
