Attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai—especially as a first time participant—has offered a stark contrast between high-level, restricted negotiations conducted with all the pomp of attending world leaders, and the long lines that awaited the passionate and somewhat frustrated participants from “civil society.” Amidst the confusion of acronyms, ever shifting schedules, and a vast campus, the fate of the earth will be hotly debated between increasingly polarized camps that sometimes seem divided as much by class as by politics.Attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai—especially as a first time participant—has offered a stark contrast between high-level, restricted negotiations conducted with all the pomp of attending world leaders, and the long lines that awaited the passionate and somewhat frustrated participants from “civil society.” Amidst the confusion of acronyms, ever shifting schedules, and a vast campus, the fate of the earth will be hotly debated between increasingly polarized camps that sometimes seem divided as much by class as by politics.
Today marked the first official gathering for the World Climate Action Summit, one of three world leader events that will focus on the first progress assessment, or Global Stocktake, of the commitments made at the 2016 Paris Agreement.
Opening under a cloud of controversy generated by the COP28 President’s dual role as the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, more than a few participants have expressed skepticism about the UN’s ability to make progress towards its goals, while others have insisted on remaining positive, even idealistic, in finding value in the experience. What I’ve realized is that it’s not the leadership at this event that inspires me but the feeling of being surrounded by people of all colors, speaking many languages, some in traditional dress, who have traveled a long way to share their stories, their love of their communities, and our shared responsibility for the earth.
Despite the reluctance of our world leaders to act decisively on behalf of a global community, there is no denying the harsh truths that were revealed today at a well-attended press conference hosted by Demand Climate Justice in response to the World Climate Action Summit. One of the key issues to be discussed during the Summit is the Loss and Damage fund that was established to recognize responsibility by developed countries like the United States for emissions damage done to developing countries. Meena Raman, Third World Network, insisted that developed countries must stop accelerating overuse of fossil fuels, a trend she described as a form of “carbon colonialism” directed at developing countries. Speaking in tones sharp with frustration, she announced that the United States pledged “peanuts,” to the Loss and Damage fund, a mere $17 million that will be subject to Congressional approval. The United Arab Emirates and European Union pledged a combined total of approximately $225 million. Raman demanded, “When we have money for missiles and bombs, where is the money for climate change?”
The United States pledge is especially unjust because, as Victor Menotti from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice informed us, the US holds only 4% of the world’s population while generating 24% of the world’s emissions since 1850. One of the key sticking points for COP28 is whether the United States and other developed countries will recognize their responsibility for the historical damage inflicted on developing countries. Even though fossil fuels are finally included in the Stocktake, the United States wants to limit the focus to coal, while continuing to expand development of other fossil fuels. In other words, the colonialist policies that were part of our country’s founding history will continue despite evidence that points towards our own self-destruction.
If current trends continue, temperatures will rise far above the target goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2.7 or even 3 degrees by the end of the century.
This will result in catastrophic climate changes that will disproportionately affect developing countries, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities of color. Without adequate reparations, people in the global south will continue to experience worsening energy poverty.
While I remain hopeful that the United Nations will find the political will to insist on real, timely and equitable climate policies, I believe that our transformation to a sustainable global community will be driven by the people who understand that we are all related, Mitakuye Owasin, who stand up to protect what they love: their families, their communities, and the earth.
Diane Wilson is a Dakota writer, educator, and bog steward, who has published four award-winning books as well as numerous essays. Her novel, The Seed Keeper, received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, and her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. She has also published a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, a middle-grade biography, Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, and co-authored a picture book—Where We Come From. Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation. She is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.
Diane is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
The post Political Reality appeared first on Climate Generation.
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
The spiking price of oil helped increase global sales of electric cars in the second quarter of 2026 despite total car sales falling, a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report shows.
The IEA’s latest update on the market for electric cars said sales increased by 4% in the second quarter, after the war between the US, Israel and Iran disrupted oil supplies around the world and caused oil prices to jump at the end of February.
The increase in electric car sales was achieved despite customers buying fewer vehicles in total due to economic problems and, in China, a reduction in government subsidies for cheap cars. Total car sales fell 5% globally in the first half of 2026.
“While a lag in consumer responses and policy implementation means the full effects will take time to materialise, the crisis has clearly reinforced the case for [electric vehicles] as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns,” the IEA’s report said.
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Import subsidies, abundant hydropower and charging investments have spurred EV adoption, with electric vehicles now making up about three-quarters of new car sales
The IEA predicts that sales of electric cars will speed up in the second half of the year, increasing by 10% for 2026 in total compared to 2025. Electric car sales will be 29% of total car sales over the full year, it forecasts, up from 24% in the first half.
The IEA expects sales of fossil fuel-reliant internal combustion engine vehicles to continue declining, as they have been doing for a decade because of economic shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and, since around 2020, the rise of electric cars.
Road transport – which also includes two- and three-wheeled vehicles like scooters and rickshaws – currently accounts for half of global oil use. The oil industry has been trying to expand markets in newer, growing sectors like plastic to replace its declining business in petrol and diesel for road transport.
Pro-EV policies
As well as the higher oil price, the IEA said this year’s electric car boom is being driven in some countries – particularly in Europe and Southeast Asia – by government policies that have been put in place since the Iran war blocked shipping of oil and other commodities through the Strait of Hormuz.
It highlighted the Netherlands and Ireland, which have both announced subsidies for scrapping old internal combustion engine cars and replacing them with electric ones.
Australia, Spain, Chile, Vietnam and the US state of California have introduced, or are introducing, tax benefits for electric cars.
Australia, the UK and Hungary have announced funding or support for charging infrastructure, while Cambodia, Brazil and Kenya have reduced taxes on imports of electric vehicles.
Growth in electric car sales was particularly strong in Europe, Brazil, Australia, India, South Korea, Vietnam, Colombia, South Africa and New Zealand.
On the other hand, electric car sales fell 16% in China – the world’s biggest electric car-buying country – in the second quarter. This was driven by a decline in total car sales, which was more extreme for internal combustion engine cars than electric ones.
In the US, electric car sales rose 20% in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of 2026. But this was about 25% less than in the same period of 2025, when Americans were taking advantage of expiring Biden-era federal tax credits.
These statistics back up Climate Home News’ reporting from the ground since the oil price spiked. As we reported from Yemen in May, the IEA data shows Chinese electric car companies are having success in the Middle East.
And as our correspondents found in Nepal and Bangladesh, there has been a surge of interest in electric vehicles across Asian countries outside of China. Yet while EV adoption in Nepal has been enabled by investments in charging and import subsidies, drivers in Bangladesh have been put off by a lack of chargers and high prices for electric two-wheelers.
The post Hormuz crisis speeds up transition to electric cars, IEA data shows appeared first on Climate Home News.
Hormuz crisis speeds up transition to electric cars, IEA data shows
Newly-released internal documents from Shell suggest that a desire to avoid incurring the costs of shutting down its oil pipelines and cleaning up spills from them was part of the energy giant’s motivation in selling off its onshore oil assets in the Niger Delta.
The company has been accused by campaigners of cutting and running by selling its controversial oil infrastructure to African firms without the resources to deal with the pollution or decommission the pipelines, leaving Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region worse off.
Climate Home News has previously revealed that highly-polluting gas flaring in the Niger Delta has soared since the sell-off, while Shell avoids responsibility and continues to profit from the oil assets it sold.
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The documents – which were cited in UK court proceedings and featured in a new Amnesty International report released on Wednesday – show that in June 2013 a Shell presentation to a policy forum on Nigeria considered options for “handling potential liabilities related to [Shell] past oil spills”.
The presentation identified 375 square kilometres of mangrove forests – an area the size of a large city – which had been affected by oil spills and asked “do we have the appetite to take on this open-ended problem?”
The next year, in 2014, Shell’s then CEO Ben van Beurden was warned by colleagues that closing down the company’s pipelines in the south of Nigeria would cost billions of dollars and take several decades.
The year after that, in 2015, Shell began to divest its Niger Delta oil businesses by selling its stake in a pipeline to Nigerian oil company Aiteo for $1.7 billion.
“Well aware” of the costs
At the time of this divestment, Amnesty International’s report says Shell “appears to have been well aware of the massive costs of decommissioning the entirety of its aged and decaying infrastructure. Rather than cover these costs, it appears that Shell decided to sell.”
The process continued, with Shell selling all its remaining onshore oil operations to a local consortium called Renaissance. At the time, Shell said its divestment “aligns with its intent to simplify its presence in Nigeria” and focus investment on offshore oil.
UN experts accuse top oil firms of rights violations over Nigerian asset sales
Despite calls for the sale to be blocked, Nigeria’s oil regulator gave it fast-track approval. Mark Dummett, deputy director and head of business and human rights at Amnesty International, told Climate Home News that this allowed Shell to “cut and run”, while communities remained trapped with polluted land, poisoned water and no justice.
Some of the affected Niger Delta communities have since taken the oil giant to local and international courts. In 2015, the Ogale and Bille communities filed a UK legal action against Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary over serious oil pollution which is scheduled to be heard in March 2027.
Shell had not responded to a Climate Home News request for comment by the time of publication. But in a statement included in the Amnesty report, the company rejected “the characterisation and portrayal of Shell” presented by the rights group findings, which it said did not reflect the “challenging operating environment in the Niger Delta at the time, including large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining carried out by organised criminal gangs”.
For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise
The oil major added that it is “committed to honesty, integrity and respect for people, and to conducting business in an ethical and transparent manner”, noting that it had worked with Nigerian authorities, the state-owned partner and communities to clean up spills. Decontamination and restoration efforts continue in the delta under a government-led programme.
Olanrewaju Suraju, chairman of the Nigeria-based HEDA Resource Centre, an environmental justice NGO which partnered with Amnesty on the report, criticised Shell for taking oil and profits from the region and leaving pollution behind. “Communities in the Niger Delta deserve truth, justice, clean-up and full remedy,” he said in a statement.
The post “Do we have the appetite?” – Shell’s fear of Niger Delta clean-up costs revealed appeared first on Climate Home News.
“Do we have the appetite?” – Shell’s fear of Niger Delta clean-up costs revealed
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