Strong support (with limits) for climate technologies

Technologies that can help stop climate change are caught in a vicious cycle. Their detractors are using doubts about performance, scale, and cost, to suppress political will. And without that will, solutions may fail to attract the investment that could drive up performance and scale, and drive down cost. Why support a technology that either won’t work well in practice, or won’t be allowed the chance?

But what if the political will is misreading the electorate? What if the positions taken by environmental activists who campaign against some of these technologies do not represent the will of the people? What if the people want these technologies? What if this is in fact the only way they will sign up to tackling climate change and species loss? Then the vicious cycle becomes virtuous. We need to know. To find the answer, WePlanet joined with fellow NGOs Zero Ideas and Potential Energy, and worked with the research agency Savanta to ask 10,500 people in Germany, Nigeria, Poland, the UK and USA. We asked people from the general population whether they support different technologies with a role to play in stopping climate change. We asked why they support them when they do, and why they don’t when they don’t.

And we asked people where they stand personally on broader trade-offs about how we tackle climate change and other challenges, to understand their motivations, their perspectives on what we should be doing, and what they are and are not prepared to support. You can read the research report, Climate Tech Forward, here.

We learned that people’s confidence in science is strong. More than twice as many people (2.3x) say that science and technology are responsible for what is best about how we live today than say it is responsible for what is worst. People are choosing to depend on science and technology to solve the dual challenges of climate change and species extinction, both of which cause widespread worry.

People are generally not prepared to compromise their prosperity. They have little appetite for reducing the size of our economy; their clear preference is to move forward with technology, innovating to grow our economy and still stay within the limits of our planet. This is not Plan B. This is Plan A. Nearly three times as many people (2.8x) say that with technology and innovation, we can continue to develop and grow our economy and still stay within the limits of our planet than say that the best way to stay within the environmental limits of our planet is to reduce the size of our economy.

People’s support for the specific climate-related technologies we tested is strong, but not universal. There is broad support for nuclear energy, especially on the political right. There is broad support for climate engineering—carbon dioxide removal in particular—especially on the political left. There is little support for food biotech, and a visceral rejection of cultivated meat.

Where support is given, it comes not from a grudging acceptance of a least worst option, but from a positive aspiration for progress. Where support is withheld, the opposition comes from a fear of the technology going wrong, or from a sense of doing wrong in our relationship with nature.

The concerns about going wrong and doing wrong may have been stoked by environmental organizations that favour different and generally more disruptive transition paths. The stances that such non-profits have taken do not fit well with what the public wants and will accept.

In fact, some environmental organizations taking those stances appear not to be speaking for their members and supporters. In general we find that their members and supporters want to see a tech-led transition, and are more supportive of climate technologies than the population at large.

With familiarity low and many people still uncommitted, everything is still to play for. This complex picture demands radical realism in order to deliver climate action by consent. We must be radical because the challenge demands it, and realistic because we depend on political will.

If we simply ‘follow the science’ and go all out for food biotech, we risk alienating many rejectors, particularly on the political right, where support is vital.

If instead we ‘follow the social science’, by going for what people are prepared to support, we may miss out on technologies that can feed the world while restoring nature, and expose ourselves to the avoidable risks of solar radiation management.

We need to take a pluralist approach to climate technologies, learning as we go, and find where the science and social science can come together.

Simon Glynn is founder of Zero Ideas and a director of WePlanet.