Americans have strongly supported a climate policy at the global level to tackle global warming, according to a 2021 study published by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The team of researchers found a "strong and genuine" support for global climate policy, with 70% people favouring it in the US and 94% in Japan, reported PTI.
Global carbon pricing, coupled with a system of redistributing the revenues—either among citizens or for investing in mitigating climate change— is considered by economists as a 'reference climate policy' as it can both reduce emissions and promote equity.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, also showed that respondents backed policies, including a global carbon pricing scheme, in which the remaining global emissions budget—how much can we emit more before we breach 2 degrees Celsius warming—is divided according to population, with countries receiving emission rights they can trade.
"We were pleasantly surprised by the results. Politicians should not be too afraid of citizens when pushing ahead with global climate protection," co-author Linus Mattauch, head of societal transition and well-being research group at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told PTI.
Another 2023 survey, conducted among 8,000 people in the US and European Union, showed that the respondents supported a concrete timeline for carbon pricing -- with, for example, $90 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2030, and a per capita reimbursement of $30 per month for every adult worldwide.
This would be a substantial financial inflow to the Global South, where per capita carbon emissions are relatively low and where $30 has more purchasing power than in the wealthy Global North, researchers said.
They added that three-quarters of the participants in the EU, and more than half in the US, expressed support for the idea, despite understanding that their own country might incur a financial loss under these conditions.
Trump’s Climate Policy Stance
This study comes amid US President Donald Trump’s continued denial of the climate crisis. He has repeatedly called climate change an ‘expensive hoax’.
The US is only sending observers to a United Nations conference on ocean protection that began June 9 in France, in line with the Trump administration’s broader withdrawal from multilateral institutions and the global fight against climate change, reported Mint.
On January 20, 2025, the day of his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to pull out from the Paris Agreement, claiming that such agreements "do not reflect our country's values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives" and "unfairly burden the United States", citing costs to American taxpayers, reported BBC.
(With inputs from PTI.)
