Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
Carbon Brief handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
More funding for ‘green development’ on China’s ‘belt and road’
BIRTHDAY SPENDING: The third belt and road forum for international cooperation was held on 17-18 October, marking the 10th anniversary of China’s global infrastructure project, known as the belt and road initiative (BRI). At the forum, China’s president Xi Jinping announced an eight-point action plan to strengthen “high-quality” cooperation in the BRI, reported state news agency Xinhua, one of which was “promoting green development”. He pledged that China’s policy banks will “each set up a 350bn yuan ($47.8bn) financing window” to fund “small but beautiful” projects, reported Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post (SCMP), with “an additional 80bn yuan ($10.9bn) injected into the Silk Road Fund”.
‘GREEN DEVELOPMENT’: China will also organise “training for 100,000 people from developing countries” to advance “green development”, SCMP added. Other outcomes include development of “green investment standards” and “$97.2bn of deals across a handful of sectors including clean energy”, said Bloomberg. Xi also pledged to “deepen green infrastructure, energy and transport cooperation”, reported Xinhua, calling the forum “the most important diplomatic event hosted by China this year” and noting that representatives from more than 140 countries confirmed their attendance. Nikkei Asia, however, reported that fewer heads of state were present compared to the last BRI forum in 2019.
PARTY LINES: Ahead of the forum, China Daily published an article written by legal NGO ClientEarth stating that China’s “vision” for supporting the global energy transition “could be further clarified by setting timeframes for targets”. On the same day, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily said that China had “promoted green consensus among governments, enterprises and the public” in a Chinese-language article, while its English-language platform carried a commentary stating that the BRI “fully demonstrates the…appeal of open, green and clean cooperation”.
CLIMATE RISKS: Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center released a new report finding that the BRI brought significant benefits to host countries in the form of additional resources for development and “creation of a new model of south-south cooperation”. However, it said the BRI had “increased carbon dioxide emissions” by 245m tonnes per year from fossil-fuel power plant projects.
EU calls on China to join global methane and renewable goals
AMBITION CALL: EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson called on China to commit to global targets on cutting methane emissions and tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, during a three-day visit to Beijing, the South China Morning Post reported. She made the statement at an annual high-level energy dialogue, the first held in-person since 2019, the paper added. Simson “stopped short” of calling for higher ambitions on China’s carbon emissions, Reuters reported, adding that she also held talks with China’s National Energy Administration chief Zhang Jianhua. In a speech, Simson highlighted the significance of the EU-China “global collaboration in establishing a global energy system”, reported the state-supporting newspaper Global Times. It added that her visit to China came ahead of one by Josep Borell, EU foreign policy chief.
SUBSIDY PROBES: Simson’s visit came shortly after the EU had launched a probe into Chinese subsidies for electric car manufacturing, Reuters noted. Just days before her visit, the Financial Times said the EU was also considering whether to “investigate China’s use of subsidies to promote the country’s wind turbine manufacturers in the same way as electric vehicles”. European turbine makers have been “lobbying for more support” to
counter cheap Chinese imports that are pushing them “to the brink of collapse”, the paper added. Simson planned to decide on the wind subsidy probe after her visit, Recharge reported.
KERRY-XIE DIALOGUE: Meanwhile, the US and China have “quietly” continued behind-the-scenes climate talks, with climate envoys of both countries holding a video conference, reported Politico. During the call, Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy for climate, and John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, discussed the “key topics for COP28”, reported the state-run newspaper China Daily. It added that they also discussed “practical cooperation” in areas outlined by two joint climate statements issued by the pair before and during COP26 in 2021.
China signals expansion of national carbon market
CARBON COUNTING: China’s ministry of ecology and the environment (MEE) released a policy document, republished by Chinese energy news outlet BJX News, that calls for companies in the chemical, petrochemical, construction materials, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, papermaking and civil aviation industries to report and verify their greenhouse gas emissions. The text stated that regulators aim to “accelerate the construction of the national carbon emissions trading market…and standardise the management of greenhouse gas emissions data of enterprises in key industries”. Only enterprises with “annual greenhouse gas emissions of 26,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent” or above will be covered.
MARKET EXPANSION: Energy newspaper Jiemian explained that the release signals MEE has begun “basic work” on expanding the national carbon market to cover these sectors. [Since it was first established in 2021, the market has only covered heat and power generation.] Yan Qin, carbon analyst at data provider Refinitiv, highlighted a potential conflict with existing policy. The MEE release said green electricity certificates (GECs) “are not recognised as proof of zero emission electricity” and cannot be used on the national carbon market, contrary to a policy on GECs released by other regulators, Qin wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
CBAM INFLUENCE? Also writing on X, Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, pointed out that the inclusion of steel, cement and aluminium has a “clear connection to the EU’s carbon tariffs (CBAM)” as the sectors included in the policy “correspond exactly with the coverage of the CBAM”. He added that “this means…that the CBAM is working exactly as it’s supposed to – pushing other economies to catch up with the EU”.
China hit with 308bn yuan bill for extremes in 2023
TYPHOON KOINU: On 8 October, typhoon Koinu turned south off China’s coast and headed for Hainan island after battering Taiwan with rain and wind, Reuters reported. China’s ministry of water resources issued a “flood scenario report”, warning of heavy rainfall that could overwhelm rivers in Fujian and Guangdong, according to Xinhua.
ECONOMIC LOSSES: The Chinese government said the country suffered 308bn yuan ($42bn) of economic losses from extreme weather such as torrential rains, landslides, hailstorms and typhoons between January and September 2023, Reuters reported. These events left hundreds of people dead, with more than 89 million people and 10m hectares of crops affected, the outlet added. Separately, CGTN said Chinese experts predict global warming may “intensify Mei-yu” season, “a rainy weather phenomenon” in the Yangtze river valley every summer affecting agriculture, economy and people’s lives. Nature published an article quoting economist Jun Rentschler from the World Bank, who said that developers often build settlements on “flood-prone” areas despite knowing about the increasing risk of climate change. Architect Yu Kongjian, who coined the “sponge city” concept, also found 70% of China’s new developments between 1980 and 2010 were in flood plains, the outlet added.
‘BOILING’ CITIES: A report by Sixth Tone revealed how Chinese cities have experienced prolonged periods of higher temperatures over the past 60 years, adding that there has been a correlation between warming and increased heavy rainfall. The outlet said “boiling” is more fitting to describe the “severity of the extreme heat” that Chinese cities endure.
Spotlight
How is China thinking about the just transition as coal jobs decline?
New analysis has found that more than half a million Chinese coal miners could lose their jobs by 2050. In this issue, Carbon Brief explores if and how China’s energy transition could mitigate these job losses – and how that calculus affects local government planning.
How many people work in China’s coal industry?
A new report from thinktank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) estimates that China’s coal industry currently employs more than 1.5 million workers.
This is down from the last official census, conducted in 2018, which counted 3.5 million employees in coal mining and “washing”. (Other estimates put current jobs at 2.6 million.)
Coal job losses are not a new phenomenon in China, with China Dialogue noting that more than 5 million people worked in the industry in 2013. It found that during the “golden decade” of coal between 2004 and 2013, efficiency improvements more than halved the average number of employees per 10,000 tonnes of coal produced.
The colossal scale of the Chinese coal industry was powered by a combination of policies that incentivised rapid expansion, allowing it to gain significant political influence.
In Shanxi, for example, it contributed 29% of the province’s GDP and 46% of tax revenues in 2018, as well as creating significant numbers of jobs.
However, the new analysis by GEM estimates that China could lose more than 500,000 additional coal jobs by 2050, of which more than 240,000 will be in Shanxi alone.
“As China aims to reduce the number of coal mines…it becomes increasingly urgent for the government to…support a just transition in the coal industry,” Dorothy Mei, a co-author of the report, told Caixin.
Alex Clark, PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief that coal jobs would be lost even if some local decision-makers prioritise coal expansion and economic growth over decarbonisation.
How have coal job losses affected workers so far?
The challenges facing laid-off coal workers can be seen in the city of Fuxin, once home to Asia’s largest open cast mine. The area was hit by a spate of mine closures in the 2000s.
A photo essay published in 2017 found that former miners in Fuxin found it hard to gain new employment and preferred to give the compensation they received for the closures to their children.
There are “many middle-aged people with little to do”, it added, given the lack of other major employers in the area.
Moving coal workers to other sectors can be challenging, Tim Wright, former professor at the University of Sheffield, wrote, since they are typically older, better paid and based in more remote locations than other low-skilled workers.
NPR reported on a similar decision to close a mine in the northern town of Dalianhe, which led to the loss of 4,000 jobs and wiped out “the town’s main source of revenue”. The mine operator later confirmed its “bold” decision, despite worker protests.
Are coal job losses being replaced by new low-carbon industries?
Although China’s policymakers do not use the term “just transition”, Mengye Zhu, assistant research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability (CGS), told Carbon Brief that “does not mean that unemployment is not an important issue”.
In 2016, the central government established a 100bn yuan ($13.7bn) fund to relocate laid-off workers to other sectors. Zhu also pointed to the important function of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as stable providers of employment.
Meanwhile, local governments are trying to replace coal with low-carbon industry growth. For example, the Fuxin local government invested 600bn yuan ($82bn) in low-carbon energy expansion, which has “created over 5,500 jobs in the region”.
Cambridge Econometrics, expanding on a guest post written for Carbon Brief, calculated that there could be a net creation of 5 million jobs by China’s energy transition nationwide.
But the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada found that energy transition projects generally have “little interest in centring affected workers and their communities”.
Furthermore, simply moving coal workers into the wind sector, as in Fuxin, may not be replicated with further coal job losses. The Global Wind Energy Council estimated that to meet its wind power targets, China only needs 7,000 additional jobs by 2027.
Zhu stated that, while wind and solar manufacturing could drive job creation, operating the average wind or solar farm needed only 30 employees, compared to around 100 for a 100-200 megawatt coal power plant.
She observed that local governments sometimes resist transition policies “because wind farms employ fewer people than coal”.
Nevertheless, she said, according to unpublished research by CGS, provinces including Yunnan, Gansu, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Sichuan will still gain jobs from the energy transition.
Watch, read, listen
BRI REVIEW: The Environment China podcast featured a discussion with Griffith Asia Institute director Prof Christoph Nedopil-Wang on the effectiveness of the BRI’s shift to focus on low-carbon projects,.
RESOURCE INTENSITY: Newsletter The East is Read translated a speech by Peking University’s Prof Huang Jikun, who argued that “with green development high on the agenda, China’s economic growth needs to shift away from heavy reliance on excessive inputs of resources”.
ASIA GEOPOLITICS: The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies discussed the impact of energy geopolitics on China’s relations with other Asian nations with Muyi Yang, associate director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, and Mohua Mukherjee, OIES senior research fellow.
MANAGING COOPERATION: Journalist and Institute for Human Sciences rector Misha Glenny interviewed China Dialogue founder Isabel Hilton on Chinese politics, competition between China and the west, the need for climate cooperation, the BRI and more.
New science
Researchers have found that the karst areas of southwest China have a greater carbon sequestration potential. Using the Carnegie–Ames–Stanford Approach (CASA) model, they calculated that the development of carbon sinks in the karst areas, enhanced by ecological restoration projects, are more effective at absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the broader region. 58.5% of carbon sinks across the karst area exhibited either “increasing trends” in net carbon sequestration or “positive reversals”, which is larger than the overall average of 45.1% for Southwest China.
Emergent constrained projections of mean and extreme warming in China
Geophysical Research Letters
A new study found that its own calculations for 2080–2099 temperatures in China are lower than “raw projections” under the intermediate-emission scenario developed through Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models. It used an “emergent constraint” framework to obtain constrained average and daily maximum temperature warming figures. This implies that the impact of extreme heat could be lower than that suggested by current raw CMIP6 projections, the study said.
China Briefing is compiled by Anika Patel and edited by Wanyuan Song and Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org.
The post China Briefing 19 October: BRI funding; coal job losses; extreme weather damage appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 19 October: BRI funding; coal job losses; extreme weather damage
Climate Change
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In response to the federal government announcing its once-in-a-decade review of Australia’s Marine Parks Network, the following lines can be attributed to Elle Lawless, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific welcomes today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will review Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. This is a rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to strengthen our marine parks and ban industrial fishing in Australia’s marine protected areas.
“Australians would be appalled to know that more than half of Australia’s Marine Parks Network currently allows for extractive industries, like longlining, bottom trawling and oil and gas mining. These so-called ‘protected’ areas were designed to safeguard our beloved ocean wildlife and underwater ecosystems – that is what Australians expect. Damaging industrial industries should not be given a free pass to trawl, fish, drill or extract from our marine parks.”
“With the first Ocean COP just around the corner, and off the back of Australia’s move to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty earlier this year, the Australian government has a unique opportunity to ride the wave of this momentum and solidify itself as a true global ocean leader.
“Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling for industrial activities to be banned from our protected waters and for at least 30% of Australia’s ocean to be protected as ocean sanctuaries. This review presents a rare opportunity to create more ocean sanctuaries, true blue havens where ocean life can recover, thrive and repopulate the surrounding waters.”
—ENDS—
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.
These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.
However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.
These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.
In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.
The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.
The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days.
‘Quietest year’
On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.
Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.
Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:
“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”
Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.
Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.
Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.
The charts posted by Ridley and Wielicki both use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.
As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.
Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.
Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.
“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”
In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia.
Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area.
By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires.
Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.
Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.
French fires
Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.
The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.
For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.
The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record.
The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times.
On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.
In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:
“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”
Central Spain scorched
While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006.
The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.
In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid.
BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.
Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.
Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:
“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”
Related
The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.
It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.
The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.
The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”.
The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.
One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.
The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.
Measuring climate actions
The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change.
Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change.
In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.
To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:
| Experiment | What they did |
| Survey one | Participants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity. |
| Survey two | Participants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint. |
| Survey three | Participants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people. |
| Surveys four and five | Participants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. |
The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.
The perception gap
The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours.
For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.
Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%.
The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors.
The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots).
They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.
In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.
The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations.
For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.
The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.
Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate.
In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group.
However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.
Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”.
However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action.
‘Pluralistic ignorance’
Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.
For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says.
However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors.
Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex.
It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.
“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds.
The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.
Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”.
However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life.
As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.
‘Targeted’ communication strategies
The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.
They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions.
The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support.
They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.
Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z
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The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
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