Successful climate policy requires cooperation among nations, but as we’ve seen during the Covid crisis, it can be very easy for nations to look inwards and prioritize their own citizens to the detriment of others.  New research from the University of Erfurt in Germany highlights how harmful such an attitude can be to tackling the climate crisis.

The paper describes the conflict between “communitarian” views, which focus on internal needs, and “cosmopolitan” views, which are more global in their outlook.  The two groups are often characterized as being the winners and losers of globalization, and the author highlights how these gains and losses are both objective and subjective.

For instance, globalization can easily be perceived as being both a threat and as having significant promise depending on one’s ideology and values.  Perhaps the most important dimension, however, is around how we perceive our community.  Cosmopolitans see community as a universal construct with all individuals equal regardless of their group membership.  By contrast, communitarians are more inclined to see community in terms of membership of particular groups, which are often defined at a local level.

Climate challenge

This divide presents a challenge for climate policy in the EU, where there are plans to make the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050 under the Green Deal program.  Success with the program will require consensus across the Member States, but the paper highlights how divisive the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide can be in meeting the targets set.

“The results show that political ideology is also highly influential in shaping attitudes towards climate policy. Indeed, it influences attitudes towards climate policy across all of the countries examined and to a stronger degree than individuals’ identification along the left-right divide,” the author explains.

The analysis revealed that the more cosmopolitan one feels, the more likely they are to support action against climate change.  This manifested itself in a regional divide across Europe, with people from Eastern Europe less concerned about climate change, on average, than those from Western Europe.  For people of the east, their concerns focused more on economic development and energy security.

The challenge of securing the backing of these more communitarian-minded Europeans is likely to be crucial to ensure that states aren’t left behind in the move towards climate neutrality.  One measure the European Commission is implementing to help with this is to try and tackle energy poverty via investment in areas such as schools, hospitals, and social housing.

The paper also argues that the Commission should do more to understand attitudes across Europe towards energy policy and climate change so that people’s concerns can be better understood and obstacles towards climate neutrality identified.