Personal experience of extreme weather events and heatwaves could play a major role in influencing people to vote for 'green' parties and policies, new research has found.
With scientists warning that human-induced global warming will bring increasingly extreme weather over the next decades, most governments are looking at how to lower greenhouse gas emissions through decarbonization of the economy. Standing by its Paris Agreement commitments, the EU has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, which means investing in major changes to the way economies function, from energy generation and transport to manufacturing and agriculture.
Muttarak said that, for better or worse, the findings of the study indicate that personal experience has influenced people where communication campaigns had not. “Psychologists have noted the influence of personal experience on climate change perception,” she said. “When climate change is seen as something that is far away, then the concern is likely to be low. In the past 10 years, Europe has experienced a series of extreme events, and these experiences do alter people’s opinion and, consequently, voting.”
The researchers suggest that, while 20 years ago, climate change and its effects seemed distant to many Europeans, the last few years had seen an abrupt shifting in attitudes. Since 2015, they say, the continent has experienced a series of heatwaves more extreme than anything recorded in the previous two millennia, as well as flooding more severe than most people had experienced in their lifetimes.
On the other hand, the researchers found, concern about the climate was lower in economically worse-off regions. That could be a serious problem in countries experiencing chronic economic stagnation.
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