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Despite scientific consensus on climate change, climate denial is still widespread. While much research has characterised climate denial, comparatively fewer studies have systematically examined how to counteract it. This review fills this gap by exploring the research about counteracting climate denial, the effectiveness and the intentions behind intervention. Through a systematic selection and analysis of 65 scientific articles, this review finds multiple intervention forms, including education, message framing and inoculation. The intentions of intervening range from changing understanding of climate science, science advocacy, influencing mitigation attitudes and counteracting vested industry. A number of divergent findings emerge: whether to separate science from policy; the disputed effects of emotions and the longitudinal impacts of interventions. The review offers guiding questions for those interested in counteracting denialism, the answers to which indicate particular strategies: identify the form of climate denial; consider the purpose of intervention and recognise one's relationship to their audiences.

Quantifying fair national shares of the remaining global carbon budget has proven challenging. Here, we propose an indicator—additional carbon accountability—that quantifies countries’ responsibility for mitigation and CO₂ removal in addition to achieving their own targets. Considering carbon debts since 1990 and future claims based on countries’ emission pathways, the indicator uses an equal cumulative per capita emissions approach to allocate accountability for closing the mitigation gap among countries with a positive total excessive carbon claim. The carbon budget is exceeded by 576 Gigatonnes of fossil CO₂ when limiting warming below 1.5 °C (50% probability). Additional carbon accountability is highest for the United States and China, and highest per capita for the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Assumptions on carbon debts strongly impact the results for most countries. The ability to pay for this accountability is challenging for Iran, Kazakhstan and several BRICS+ members, in contrast to the G7 members.

In order to explore the strengths and weaknesses of democracies in mitigating climate change, this article presents a review of more than two decades of research on the democracy-climate nexus. It studies 72 identified articles and book chapters in which correlation analyses between indicators of democracy and climate policy performances have been conducted. The review confirms that democracies tend to generate better climate policy outputs than autocracies, in terms of adoption of policies, laws and regulations. However, there is weak empirical evidence for an association between democratic development and CO₂ emission reductions. While empirical evidence shows that democracy can promote decarbonization, aspects such as economic growth, income distribution, energy mix, state capacity and corruption can influence the outcome of decarbonization policy or even counteract it. The research indicates that with deployment of renewable energy, economic activities are increasingly disconnected from fossil fuel dependence, and the political influence of the fossil fuel industry reduced. This process could also enhance the capacity of democracies to accelerate the energy transition and reduce emission levels. Investments in renewable energy, together with policies aiming at combating corruption and accomplishing a fairer wealth distribution, could help to unleash the transformative capacity of democracy towards a low-carbon future.

Key policy insights

• Studies show that democracies tend to generate better climate policy outputs than autocracies, but the empirical evidence that democracy promotes climate policy impact, such as decrease of CO₂ emissions, is weak.

• Economic growth, income distribution, energy mix, and corruption influence climate policy performance significantly more than the level of democracy.

• In developing countries with rapid growth, democratic qualities do not have any noteworthy alleviating effect on emissions generated by growth; hence combating poverty and in parallel advancing and sustaining human freedom, without carbon-intensive economic development, can be challenging.

• Investments in renewable energy can enhance the capacity of democracies to decrease CO₂ emissions, as economic activities are increasingly disconnected from fossil fuel dependency and the related political influence of the fossil fuel industry.

• None of the reviewed studies provide any evidence suggesting that autocratic regimes perform better on climate policy than democracies.

Recent reports from climate scientists stress the urgency to implement more ambitious and stringent climate policies to stay below the 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target. These policies should simultaneously aim to ensure distributional justice throughout the process. A neglected yet potentially effective policy instrument in this context is rationing. However, the political feasibility of rationing, like any climate policy instrument, hinges to a large extent on the general public being sufficiently motivated to accept it. This study reports the first cross-country analysis of the public acceptability of rationing as a climate policy instrument by surveying 8654 individuals across five countries—Brazil, Germany, India, South Africa, and the US—on five continents. By comparing the public acceptability of rationing fossil fuels and high climate-impact foods with consumption taxes on these goods, the results reveal that the acceptability of fossil fuel rationing is on par with that of taxation, while food taxation is preferred over rationing across the countries. Respondents in low-and middle-income countries and those expressing a greater concern for climate change express the most favourable attitudes to rationing. As political leaders keep struggling to formulate effective and fair climate policies, these findings encourage a serious political and scientific dialogue about rationing as a means to address climate change and other sustainability-related challenges.

Carbon taxes are considered to be an efficient method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; however, such taxes are generally unpopular, partly because they are seen as unfair. To explore if public acceptance of a stricter carbon tax in Sweden can be enhanced, this study investigates the effectiveness of three different policy designs, addressing collective and personal distributional consequences and promoting procedural aspects (democratic influence). A large-scale (n = 5200) survey is applied, combining a traditional multi-category answer format with a binary choice format. The results show that support for higher carbon taxation can be enhanced if tax revenues are redistributed to affected groups. Policies with collective justice framings can change the attitudes of individuals who express antagonistic attitudes to increased carbon taxation and influence groups comparably more affected by carbon taxes, such as rural residents, low-income groups, and people who are driving long distances. Policy designs addressing collective distributional consequences are, however, less effective on individuals expressing right-leaning ideological views and low environmental concern. Policies addressing personal distributional outcomes, or perceptions of procedural injustice, had no significant effect on policy acceptance. 

There is strong scientific evidence for the existence of the significant economic value of several climate-related co-benefits. However, these are seldom recognised in policy-making, and knowledge is still scarce on some co-benefit types and categories. To identify research needs and highlight policy-making opportunities, we propose a new framework and three-type-taxonomy of climate-related co-benefits. We define climate policy co-benefits, such as improved air quality, as ‘Type 1’; co-benefits for climate objectives from policy-making in other fields, such as taxation, as ‘Type 2’; and co-benefits from policies designed to achieve multiple objectives as ‘Type 3’. In order to apply the framework and to analyse how co-benefits have been regarded in policy-making in a climate pioneering country, we also explore the case of Sweden. It is shown that several co-benefits exist, but that these are overlooked almost entirely in policy-making, constituting a bias against climate mitigation. In order to counteract this problem, the article presents a number of recommendations, including a call to researchers to identify and quantify additional co-benefits and to policy-makers on governance reforms, including the need to organise policy-making processes and set decision criteria that promote the consideration of co-benefits.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies have been insufficient in achieving rapid and profound reductions of energy-related greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Consequently, energy sufficiency has gained attention as a complementary strategy over the past two decades. Yet, most research on energy sufficiency has been theoretical and its implementation in policy limited. This study draws on the growing sufficiency literature to examine the presence of sufficiency as a strategy for reducing energy-related GHG emissions in Sweden, a country often regarded as a "climate-progressive" country. By conducting a keyword and content analysis of energy policies and parliamentary debates during four governmental terms of office (2006-2022), this research explores the extent to which sufficiency is integrated into Swedish energy policy, as well as potential barriers to its adoption. The analyses revealed a scarcity of sufficiency elements. Although some policies could potentially result in energy savings, they are infrequent and overshadowed by the prevailing emphasis on efficiency and renewable energy. Furthermore, Sweden lacks a target for sufficiency or absolute energy reductions. The main impediments to sufficiency implementation include the disregard of scientific evidence in the policy-making process and the perceived contradiction between sufficiency and industrial competitiveness. This study thus concludes that sufficiency at best remains at the periphery of Swedish energy policy. Given the reinforced ambitions within the European Union, this raises questions regarding the validity of Sweden's reputation as a climate-progressive country.

Inom forskningsprogrammet FAIRTRANS har en workshop hållits om investeringars roll i klimatomställningen. Syftet var att lyfta fram olika gruppers behov av investeringar för en rättvis fossilfri framtid inom ramen för en svensk koldioxidbudget.

Syftet med detta kunskapsunderlag är att förbereda för deltagande och dialog inför FAIRTRANS Workshop 2. Fokus för diskussionen är vilka investeringar som bör prioriteras för att Sverige ska nå en rättvis koldioxidbudget.