People all over the world are worried about climate change and want their governments to do more to cut planet-heating emissions and protect them from extreme weather, a UN survey of more than 75,000 people from 77 countries has found.
Cassie Flynn, climate lead for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the results were “undeniable evidence that people everywhere support bold climate action”.
While the top-line global figures are interesting, there’s a lot to be learned from comparing the countries too. You can use our search bars to check responses for the countries you’re interested in, but here are Climate Home’s five takeaways from the data:
1. Climate change is not just a rich-world concern
Concern about climate change is still sometimes presented as a luxury issue that worries only privileged people with nothing more immediate to care about.
But this poll – called the Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024, and conducted for the UNDP with the University of Oxford and GeoPoll – suggests that citizens of wealthier countries dwell on climate change much less often than those in the least developed countries.
Almost two-thirds of people in Uganda say they think about climate change every day while less than one-third of people in the US, Japan, China, France or the UK do the same.
Hamira Kobusingye, a young Ugandan climate activist, told Climate Home that Ugandans are seeing the effects of global warming first-hand. “My grandmother often complains that her land no longer yields enough food,” she said.
“In Uganda, you have to be extremely wealthy to say you’re not affected by the climate crisis,” she added.
2. Saudis back their government’s climate action
When asked how well their countries are doing at addressing climate change, people generally shrug their shoulders. The most popular answers are “somewhat well” followed by “neither well nor badly”.
But the people of Saudi Arabia are by far the most positive about their country’s performance, with almost two-thirds saying it is doing “very well”.
Globally, less than a fifth say the same – and residents of big, developed countries are among the most negative about how they are doing.
3. Russians are most opposed to fast energy transition
Globally, 71% of people say their country should replace fossil fuels with renewable energy either quickly or very quickly.
Support for a fast transition is highest in the South Asian island nation of Sri Lanka, where importing fossil fuels is a huge drain on the economy.
But it’s also popular in fossil fuel producers like Nigeria, South Africa, Iran and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, it’s low in Russia, which has plentiful supplies of oil and gas, and where concern for climate change is pretty low.
As with many other issues, the US – the world’s biggest oil and gas producer – is divided. A quarter say it should not transition at all, more than any other nation. But a similar amount say it should transition “very quickly”.
4. Rich, colder countries are less fearful of extreme weather
Globally, nearly four-fifths of respondents want more protection from extreme weather. But those figures are lowest mainly in wealthy temperate nations like the US, Germany and Japan and highest in poorer, hotter countries like Benin, Ecuador and Haiti.
Some high- and middle-income countries came near the top of the list wanting “more protection”, including Greece, Mexico and Italy. All are hot during their summer months and frequently suffer from heatwaves and wildfires.
5. Even citizens of rich countries want them to do more to help poorer ones
Globally, nearly four-fifths of citizens say rich nations should give more help to poorer countries to address climate change.
Support for this is unsurprisingly higher among inhabitants of lower-income countries than those of richer ones. But even in wealthy countries, their people want them to do more.
The country with by far the biggest minority saying “less help” is the US – the nation that has proportionately done the least to help through providing climate finance in recent years, in relation to its size, economic power and historical emissions.
The pollsters did not specify whether “help” meant financial support. But Iskander Vernoit, co-founder of the Morocco-based Imal Initative think-tank, told Climate Home it shows developed countries could give more climate finance without losing domestic support.
“This further demonstrates that there is no leg to stand on for those hiding behind so-called political realism to justify a failure to confront the staggeringly low fiscal ambition from rich countries to support poorer countries with new grant-equivalent climate finance,” he said.
The post Five things we learned from the UN’s climate mega-poll appeared first on Climate Home News.
With the U.S. bombing Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closed, energy experts say countries transitioning to renewables will be more resilient in the “face of the shock.”
The United States’ war on Iran could fundamentally alter how countries consume and generate energy and hamper international progress in combating climate change, a panel of energy experts said today.
The Global Energy Supply in a Decade ‘Is Not a World We’re Going to Recognize’
One month into the US and Israel’s war on Iran, at least 60 countries have taken emergency measures in response to the subsequent global energy crisis, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
So far, these countries have announced nearly 200 policies to save fuel, support consumers and boost domestic energy supplies.
Carbon Brief has drawn on tracking by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and other sources to assess the global policy response, just as a temporary ceasefire is declared.
Since the start of the war in late February, both sides have bombed vital energy infrastructure across the region as Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – a key waterway through which around a fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) trade passes.
This has made it impossible to export the usual volumes of fossil fuels from the region and, as a result, sent prices soaring.
Around 30 nations, from Norway to Zambia, have cut fuel taxes to help people struggling with rising costs, making this by far the most common domestic policy response to the crisis.
Some countries have stressed the need to boost domestic renewable-energy construction, while others – including Japan, Italy and South Korea – have opted to lean more on coal, at least in the short term.
The most wide-ranging responses have been in Asia, where countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels from the Middle East have implemented driving bans, fuel rationing and school closures in order to reduce demand.
‘Largest disruption’
On 28 February, the US and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, triggering conflict across the Middle East and sending shockwaves around the world.
There have been numerous assaults on energy infrastructure, including an Iranian attack on the world’s largest LNG facility in Qatar and an Israeli bombing of Iran’s gas sites.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, is causing what the IEA has called the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.
A fifth of the world’s oil and LNG is normally shipped through this region, with 90% of those supplies going to destinations in Asia. Without these supplies, fuel prices have surged.
Governments around the world have taken emergency actions in response to this new energy crisis, shielding their citizens from price spikes, conserving energy where possible and considering longer-term energy policies.
Even with a two-week ceasefire announced, the energy crisis is expected to continue, given the extensive damage to infrastructure and continuing uncertainties.
Asian crunch
Carbon Brief has used tracking by the IEA, news reports, government announcements and internal monitoring by the thinktank E3G to assess the range of national responses to the energy crisis roughly one month into the Iran war.
In total, Carbon Brief has identified 185 relevant policies, announcements and campaigns from 60 national governments.
As the map below shows, these measures are concentrated in east and south Asia. These regions are facing the most extreme disruption, largely due to their reliance on oil and gas supplies from the Middle East.
Nations including Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India are already spending billions of dollars on fuel subsidies to protect people from rising costs.
At least 16 Asian countries are also taking drastic measures to reduce fuel consumption. For example, the Philippines has declared a “state of national emergency”, which includes limiting air conditioning in public buildings and subsidising public transport.
Other examples from the region include the government in Bangladesh asking the public and businesses to avoid unnecessary lighting, Pakistan reducing the speed limit on highways and Laos encouraging people to work from home.
Europe – which was hit hard by the 2022 energy crisis due to its reliance on Russian gas – is less immediately exposed to the current crisis than Asia. However, many nations are still heavily reliant on gas, including supplies from Qatar.
The continent is already feeling the effects of higher global energy prices as countries compete for more limited resources.
At least 18 European nations have introduced measures to help people with rising costs. Spain, which is relatively insulated from the crisis due to the high share of renewables in its electricity supply, nevertheless announced a €5bn aid package, with at least six measures to support consumers.
Many African countries, while also less reliant on direct fossil-fuel supplies via the Strait of Hormuz than Asia, are still facing the strain of higher import bills. Some, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia, are also facing severe fuel shortages.
There have been fewer new policies across the Americas, which have been comparatively insulated from the energy crisis so far. One outlier is Chile, which is among the region’s biggest fuel importers and is, therefore, more exposed to global price increases.
Tax cuts
The most common types of policy response to the energy crisis so far have been efforts to protect people and businesses from the surge in fuel prices.
At least 28 nations, including Italy, Brazil and Australia, have introduced a total of 31 measures to cut taxes – and, therefore, prices – on fuel.
Even across Africa, where state revenues are already stretched, some nations – including Namibia and South Africa – are cutting fuel levies in a bid to stabilise prices.
Another 17 countries, including Mexico and Poland, have directly capped the price of fuel. Others, such as France and the UK, have opted for more targeted fuel subsidies, designed to support specific vulnerable groups and industries.
These measures are all shown in the dark blue “consumer support” bars in the chart below.
Such measures can directly help consumers, but some leaders, NGOs and financial experts have noted that there is also the risk of them driving inflation and reinforcing reliance on the existing fossil fuel-based system.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, spoke in favour of short-term measures to “smooth the shock”, but noted that “broad-based and open-ended measures may add excessively to demand”.
Measures to conserve energy, of the type that many developing countries in Asia have implemented extensively, have been described by the IEA as “more effective and fiscally sustainable than broad-based subsidies”.
So far, there have been at least 23 such measures introduced to limit the use of transport, particularly private cars.
These include Lithuania cutting train fares, two Australian states making public transport free and Myanmar and South Korea asking people to only drive their cars on certain days.
Clean vs coal
At least eight countries have announced plans to either increase their use of coal or review existing plans to transition away from coal, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. These include Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Germany and Italy.
These measures broadly involve delaying coal-plant closure, as in Italy, or allowing older sites to operate at higher rates, as in Japan – rather than building more coal plants.
There has been extensive coverage of how the energy crisis is “driving Asia back to coal”. However, as Bloomberg columnist David Fickling has noted, this shift is relatively small and likely to be offset by a move to cheap solar power in the longer term.
Indeed, some countries have begun to consider changes to the way they use energy going forward, amid a crisis driven by the spiralling costs of fossil-fuel imports.
Leaders in India, Barbados and the UK have explicitly stressed the importance of a structural shift to using clean power. Governments in France and the Philippines are among those linking new renewable-energy announcements with the unfolding crisis.
New renewable-energy capacity will take time to come online, albeit substantially less time than developing new fossil-fuel generation. In the meantime, some nations are also taking short-term measures to make their road transport less reliant on fossil fuels.
For example, the Chilean government has enabled taxi drivers to access preferential credit for purchasing electric vehicles (EVs). Cambodia has cut import taxes on EVs and Laos has lowered excise taxes on them.
Finally, there have been some signs that countries are reconsidering their future exposure to imported fossil fuels, given the current economics of oil and gas.
The New Zealand government has indicated that a plan to build a new LNG terminal by 2027 now faces uncertainty. Reuters reported that Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has told the government it wanted to abandon a plan to build a new LNG-fired power plant in Vietnam, in favour of renewables.
The post Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis
Seven Senate Democrats launched the probe over controversial tax credits to the country’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Seven Democratic U.S. senators have launched a probe into a $370 million “alternative fuel” payout to Cheniere Energy, made earlier this year by the IRS, that critics say the liquefied natural gas export company never should have received.
US Senators Investigate $370 Million IRS Payout to Cheniere Energy
The Global Energy Supply in a Decade ‘Is Not a World We’re Going to Recognize’
Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis
US Senators Investigate $370 Million IRS Payout to Cheniere Energy
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