Europeans Lag Behind Rest of World in Support for Carbon Taxes & Climate Policies That Benefit Lower-Income People

A large-scale survey has found that Europeans tend to be more climate-literate, but they lag behind other countries when it comes to carbon taxes and policy support.

Last month, Denmark became the world’s first country to agree to a carbon tax on agriculture, asking cattle and pig farmers to pay around $43 per tonne of emissions from 2030.

This wasn’t met with as much backlash from farmers as one would think, indicating that Danes recognise the environmental risks of livestock agriculture and the importance of lowering emissions.

That trend can be seen across Europe and the rest of the world, according to the annual Climate Survey by the European Investment Bank (EIB). It involved over 30,000 participants from 35 countries – including EU member states, the US, India, China and Japan – who were asked 12 knowledge-based and nine opinion-based questions about climate change.

Support for carbon taxes high

The poll revealed that a majority of Europeans are pro-carbon-taxes, with 68% in favour of progressive emissions taxes (where wealthier people pay more tax on carbon-intensive purchases), 75% backing a carbon wealth tax (which involves higher taxes for entities earning from planet-harming activities), and another 74% supporting fossil fuel tax reform (where subsidies are redirected to clean energy).

However, 41% of EU citizens are unwilling to pay a tax on their personal income to finance climate policies that would benefit people earning less than them.

And while that’s a positive, these numbers are much lower than in other parts of the world. People in China, the US and India – the three largest polluters in the world – all exhibit much higher support for each of these tax policies than Europeans. These countries are also considerably more willing to pay income tax for climate policies. Such support is especially high in China and India.

Europeans least confident about government action on climate change

South Koreans turned out as the most climate-literate of all countries surveyed by the EIB, scoring 6.64 on a scale of 0 to 10 on the fact-based questions. But these consumers are split about their government’s ability to deal with climate change, with 53% confident in their leaders’ actions.

The picture is very different elsewhere. The EU (6.37) outscored the US (5.38) on climate knowledge, though came behind the UK (6.44). However, while 57% of Americans are confident their government can introduce policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and social inequality, this drops to just 42% in the UK and 38% in the EU.

Support for governments is overwhelmingly high in India and China, where 88% and 93% of citizens respectively believe their leaders will be able to tackle the crisis adeptly. That said, India has the second-highest number of people who believe climate change is a hoax (12%), behind only Latvia (13%). The US isn’t far below at 11%.

In the EU and China, only 6% deny climate change, a number also low in the UK (7%).

People split on impacts of current national climate policies

As things stand, we’re way off the 1.5°C target countries agreed to at the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris. And citizens are concerned about this globally.

EU residents are evenly split on whether existing climate policies will create or destroy jobs – similar attitudes exist among Americans, Japanese and Brits. People are especially concerned about their purchasing power, with 73% of Europeans, 69% of Brits and 64% of Japanese worried they’ll have less to spend based on current climate legislation.

But despite respondents not being confident in their governments’ abilities to cut emissions and inequality, they seem to be more upbeat about the effects of existing measures on their daily lives. In the EU, 61% believe policies will positively affect their life quality, including the quality of food and their personal health.

This is echoed in the US (66%), China (69%), India (65%) and the UK (68%). But this highlights a contradictory mindset among respondents. In the knowledge-based questions, the most recognised consequence of the climate crisis globally was worsening world hunger as a result of extreme-weather-hit crop yields.

It underscores the lack of awareness around climate change and the food system, which is responsible for a third of all emissions (second only to fossil fuels). The global population will approach 10 billion by 2050, and there simply isn’t enough land or water to feed the world in the way we’re doing right now.

Meat and dairy consumption need to be significantly reduced. The risk of not doing so is tremendous – without any action to reduce and prevent climate change effects, malnutrition and hunger could increase by 20% by mid-century.