The world “must change track”, warns the latest “emissions gap” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
If it fails to do so, adds the increasingly exasperated UN agency, “we will be saying the same thing next year – and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record”.
The report, which is the latest in a regular series published annually since 2013, charts the “gap” between where emissions are headed under current policies and commitments over the coming decade compared to what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2C and pursuing efforts to stay under 1.5C.
It highlights both the record-breaking temperatures of 2023 and the record levels of greenhouse gas emissions, noting that “humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change…yet the world fails to cut emissions (again)”.
The report provides an assessment of global action on climate change over the past year. It finds that, while there has been some progress both in stronger climate policies and the falling costs of low-carbon energy, the world remains on track for around 2.7C warming by 2100.
The world is also getting close to passing the 1.5C “aspirational” target of the Paris Agreement, says the report, with the vanishingly small remaining carbon budget for 1.5C and the fact that 2023 has already seen more than 86 days exceeding 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
While the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target refers to multidecadal average temperatures, the fact that the world is already occasionally exceeding it is a “signal that we are getting closer”.
COP28, which starts next week in Dubai, will mark the conclusion of the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement and set the scene for the next round of climate pledges by nations, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
The UNEP report concludes that the possibility of meeting the Paris temperature target now hinges on “relentlessly strengthening” mitigation measures this decade and narrowing the emissions gap.
(For previous reports, see Carbon Brief’s detailed coverage in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).
Continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions
Despite falling clean-energy costs and more ambitious climate policies adopted by some countries, global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.2% from 2021 to 2022, setting a new all-time record of 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e).
This reflects a full rebound of global emissions from the declines seen during the Covid-19 pandemic (with the exception of the transportation sector).
The figure below shows global GHG emissions between 1990 and 2022, broken down by different contributing greenhouse gases. Overall GHG emissions have grown by 44% over the past 32 years, though the rate of growth has been slower over the past decade than over the 1990s and 2000s.
CO2 from fossil fuels is the main driver of the increase and is responsible for around two-thirds of current global GHG emissions.
Emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases account for around a quarter, with the remainder from land-use change (e.g. deforestation).
The growth of fossil-fuel emissions has been accompanied by increased investments in fossil-fuel extraction worldwide.
The UNEP report notes that governments are currently planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be possible in a pathway consistent with limiting warming to well-below 2C.
The report also takes stock of current GHG emissions broken down by country, both on a total and per-capita basis. The figure below shows both 2021 emissions by country and the change in emissions since 2000 across both metrics.
This reveals the complicated nature of GHG emissions; while some countries such as India have large absolute emissions, their per-capita emissions remain a small fraction of those of the US, China, or Europe. At the same time, emerging economies such as China and Brazil now emit more on a per-capita basis than the EU. Emissions have been rapidly growing in China, Russia and Indonesia, but are declining over time in the US, EU and Brazil.
However, the changes to the climate that the world has experienced to date are a result of our historic cumulative emissions rather than the emissions of the past few years.
The figure below shows the historical cumulative CO2 emissions by country, the contribution to historical warming from GHG emissions, the current GHG emissions, plus the current population.
While China is responsible for more GHG emissions today than any other country, it is still responsible for less warming to-date than the US (and only slightly more than the EU).
While this may change in the future if Chinese emissions do not decline, it reflects the fact that high-income countries remain responsible for an outsized portion of the warming the world is experiencing today.
The least developed countries, by contrast, are only responsible for 6% of current warming and 3% of current GHG emissions, despite representing 14% of the global population.
As the report notes, meeting Paris Agreement goals requires that high-income countries accelerate domestic emissions reductions and reach net-zero “sooner than the global average”, while providing support to help low- and middle-income countries meet their climate goals.
The report also calls out the importance of meeting pressing development needs in lower-income countries “alongside a transition away from fossil fuels”.
A persistently wide emissions gap
Only nine countries have submitted new or updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement over the past year, though 149 countries have since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
As the report notes, “progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 has shown that the world is capable of change”, with future greenhouse gas emissions projected to only increase 3% by 2030 compared to 16% when the Paris Agreement was first struck.
While these NDCs – alongside other policies enacted by countries – have helped move the world away from some of the darkest climate futures that seemed plausible a decade ago, a large gap remains between the pathway the world is on today and what would be required to put the world on a path to meet its Paris Agreement targets.
The report finds an emissions gap in 2030 of around 14GtCO2e between where the world is headed if countries achieve their “unconditional” NDCs (that is, those not conditioned on “green finance” or other external assistance) – shown by the yellow line – and an emissions pathway that limits warming to below 2C (defined in the report as a >66% chance of avoiding 2C warming) – shown by as the dark blue line.
The gap is even larger – around 22GtCO2e – between unconditional NDCs and a scenario consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C by the end of the century (grey line). If conditional NDCs are fully implemented in addition to unconditional ones (light blue line), this emissions gap would shrink by around 3GtCO2e through to 2030 for both the 2C and 1.5C scenarios.
Median emission scenarios adapted from Figure 4.2 in the 2023 UNEP Emission Gap Report. Red line shows a scenario with no new climate policies after 2010, orange shows existing policies already implemented by governments, yellow and light blue lines show additional conditional and unconditional NDCs, respectively. The dark blue line shows emissions consistent with a below 2C trajectory, and grey line shows emissions consistent with a 1.5C trajectory. Chart by Carbon Brief.
However, countries are not necessarily even on track to meet their NDCs. The report suggests that a number of countries – including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the EU, Japan, Korea, the UK and US – are unlikely to meet their targets with existing policies in place today.
The emissions gap has shrunk slightly – by 1GtCO2e – across all scenarios since the prior 2022 UNEP report. The report also notes that the current policy pathway is now closer to that of unconditional NDCs than in last year’s report, reflecting some progress in countries adopting policies to get closer to achieving NDCs.
The report has also updated the global temperature outcomes associated with current policies and different levels of future climate commitments – including meeting unconditional NDCs, conditional NDCs and fully achieving ambitious net-zero pledges (which, the report notes, few if any countries are on track to achieve today). The figure below compares these estimates between the 2022 and 2023 versions of the UNEP report.
Global mean surface warming projections in 2100 relative to preindustrial levels from the 2022 and 2023 UNEP Emissions Gap report. Bars show the central (50th percentile) estimate, while 90th percentile uncertainties are shown in the label. Chart by Carbon Brief.
While temperature outcomes are slightly higher in the 2023 report than the 2022 one for each mitigation scenario, these represent changes to the UNEP modelling framework rather than retrenchment or weakening of commitments by countries.
Grappling with current policy uncertainty
There has been increasing interest in the scientific community in recent years in exploring current policy pathways – what is likely to happen both to emissions and 21st century warming under policies in place today.
This has always represented something of a challenging exercise, both because determining emissions implied by current policies is inherently uncertain and because it represents a moving target in a world where countries are increasingly adopting more ambitious climate policies. As such, the range of future warming projected under current policies has moved noticeably downward over the past few years.
When determining future warming associated with current policy, modellers have to account for two different uncertainties: what range of future emissions might occur under current policies; and how the climate might respond to those emissions (as determined by climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedbacks).
The new UNEP report takes an important step in more clearly exploring the range of possible current policy outcomes that might occur. It also emphasises that, while we tend to focus on a single central outcome (e.g. 2.4C in the new IEA World Energy Outlook and 2.7C in this new UNEP report), these numbers mask a huge amount of uncertainty.
The figure below shows both the range of climate outcomes under the best estimate of future emissions for current policies, unconditional NDCs, and net-zero pledges (bars), as well as the maximum and minimum emissions projection consistent with those scenarios.
This illustrates that, while 4C warming is extremely unlikely under the central estimate of current policy emissions, it is much harder to rule it out under the range of possible emissions in a current policy world.
In other words, future emissions under current policies (as well as NDCs) remain poorly constrained, particularly in the latter part of the century, and it is important not to underestimate the risks of higher emissions futures if the pace of mitigation is not accelerated.
The rapidly shrinking carbon budget
There is a relatively small amount of allowable carbon emissions – known as the “carbon budget” – remaining for warming to be limited to 1.5C.
As of the start of 2023, there is only around 250GtCO2 – or approximately six years of current emissions – remaining that can be emitted before the world has a 50-50 chance of exceeding 1.5C warming. This represents a notable reduction from the carbon budget assessed in the prior UNEP report, reflecting a recent downward reassessment in the literature.
While this carbon budget can, in theory, be expanded through the widespread use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) later in the century – as occurs in the 1.5C scenarios in the recent IPCC 6th Assessment Report – these technologies remain relatively nascent and expensive.
The figure below shows emission trajectories to limit warming to below 1.5C with a 50-50 chance in the absence of net-negative emissions. The different lines show the emissions reductions that would be required if emissions had peaked in each year, between 2000 and 2030, with the current year (2023) highlighted in grey.
Emission reduction trajectories associated with a 50% chance of limiting warming below 1.5C, without a reliance on net-negative emissions, by starting year. Solid black line shows historical emissions, while dashed black line shows emissions constant at 2023 levels. Source: Historical CO2 emissions from the Global Carbon Project. 1.5C carbon budgets based on Lamboll et al 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief, adapted from a figure originally designed by Robbie Andrews.
If emissions had peaked and begun to decline after 2000, the 1.5C target would have been much easier to achieve, only requiring reductions of around 3% per year.
By contrast, limiting warming to below 1.5C starting in 2023, without the use of net-negative global emissions, would require a roughly 18% cut each year through to 2033.
Each year that passes without global emission reductions puts the 1.5C target further out of reach, says the UNEP report. While the Paris Agreement’s “well below” 2C target is easier to achieve than 1.5C, delays will make it increasingly difficult, too.
Carbon Brief’s interactive chart below shows the emission reductions needed, by peaking year, to meet the 2C target without the use of net-negative emissions.
Emission reduction trajectories associated with a 66% chance of limiting warming below 2C, without a reliance on net-negative emissions, by starting year. Solid black line shows historical emissions, while dashed black line shows emissions constant at 2023 levels. Source: Historical CO2 emissions from the Global Carbon Project. 2C carbon budgets based on Lamboll et al 2023. Chart by Carbon Brief, adapted from a figure originally designed by Robbie Andrews.
If the world had started reducing emissions in the year 2000, emissions would have to fall 1% a year to stay below 2C (with a >66% chance).
From 2023, emissions now need to fall 4% a year to stay below 2C – and, if emissions fail to drop, then the 2C carbon budget will be used up within 22 years.
It is worth noting that the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C will be fully exhausted simply by the existing infrastructure in place today, as will most of the remaining budget for 2C.
The figure below shows the emissions commitment associated with both existing extraction infrastructure (coal mines and gas and oil wells), as well as by the existing consuming infrastructure (e.g. everything that uses fossil fuels today).
As the report notes, achieving our climate targets requires that much of the existing capital stock will need “to be retired early, retrofitted with carbon capture, and/or operated below capacity”. It also stresses that there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure globally unless an even greater quantity of existing fossil infrastructure is prematurely retired.
Every year of delay increases dependence on future CO2 removal
For the first time, the UNEP report contains a dedicated chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies, reflecting the increased likelihood that the world will “overshoot” its most ambitious climate goals and require net-negative emissions to reduce global temperatures in the latter half of the 21st century.
As the report notes, any delay in emissions reductions will “likely increase future dependence on carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere”. However, it warns that “the availability of large-scale CDR options in the future cannot be taken for granted” given the early stage and high cost of many of these technologies.
The figure below shows the report’s assessment of the feasibility, scalability, ease of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), potential environmental consequences, public perception and cost of a wide range of carbon removal technologies under development or actively deployed today. It also includes an assessment of the “permanence” of each, which is important in determining how effective they can be at effectively reversing the warming associated with CO2 emissions over the long term.
The report notes that relying on large-scale CDR to reduce global temperatures in the future involves significant risks to biodiversity, water resources, food security and livelihoods. Even a relatively short period of “overshoot” of global temperatures is associated with significant risks.
The post UNEP: Humanity is still ‘breaking all the wrong records’ in fast-warming world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UNEP: Humanity is still ‘breaking all the wrong records’ in fast-warming world
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
Related
Scientists are ‘most trusted’ source of climate information in global-south survey
Survey: ‘Very few’ Africans place responsibility for climate action on ‘rich nations’
Guest post: How public attitudes towards ‘CO2 removal’ differ in the UK and US
Guest post: How ‘discourses of delay’ are used to slow climate action
The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
‘Ride the wave of momentum’: Australia announces once-in-a-decade Marine Parks Network review
Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action
-
Greenhouse Gases12 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change12 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测