The Role of Political Attention in Moderating the Association between Political Identities and Anthropogenic Climate Change Belief in Britain
| Author | John Kenny |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720928261 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720928261
Political Studies
2022, Vol. 70(1) 3 –25
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720928261
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The Role of Political Attention
in Moderating the Association
between Political Identities
and Anthropogenic Climate
Change Belief in Britain
John Kenny
Abstract
US research shows that the partisan divide among elites on climate change has been mirrored by
division at the citizen level, with this division being especially prominent among more politically
engaged citizens. Using British Election Study data from 2016, this article examines whether a
similar phenomenon is occurring in Britain, a country that experienced an increase in climate
sceptic media coverage in the aftermath of the passing of the 2008 Climate Change Act. The
results show that UK Independence Party and Conservative Party partisans as well as Leavers who
pay more attention to politics are less likely to believe in the existence of anthropogenic climate
change in contrast to Labour Party partisans and Remainers where increased political attention
is associated with greater belief. These findings point to the inherent difficulties of bringing public
beliefs on climate change in line with the scientific consensus in the presence of divided elite cues.
Keywords
Britain, beliefs, climate change, elite cues, partisanship
Accepted: 27 April 2020
Introduction
This article examines anthropogenic climate change belief in Britain with a particular
focus on the moderating role of political attention. The scientific evidence for the occur-
rence of anthropogenic climate change has continued to become more and more certain.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that, ‘It is extremely likely
that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global average
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Corresponding author:
John Kenny, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, Highfield
Campus, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: j.p.kenny@soton.ac.uk
928261PSX0010.1177/0032321720928261Political StudiesKenny
research-article2020
Article
4 Political Studies 70(1)
surface temperatures from 1951 to 2010’ (Stocker et al., 2013: 60). With the negative
consequences of continued global warming resulting from human activity – including the
loss of biodiversity, rising sea-levels and more extreme droughts and heatwaves – the
scientific community recommends that action to mitigate against such occurrences is
taken urgently.
When it comes to implementing such policies, government action has lagged behind.
As Remnick (2015: 36) remarks, ‘The awareness of nearly all of the world’s leaders of the
imminence of devastating climate change has roused almost none of them to effective
action’. While debate rages on the adequacy of national emissions reductions pledges
made at the 2015 Climate Change Summit in Paris, countries are not on track to meet
even these self-imposed targets (Plumer and Popovich, 2018; United Nations Environment
Programme, 2017). This includes the United Kingdom where the Committee on Climate
Change (2019) noted in their annual report of July 2019 that the country only delivered 1
of their 25 critical policies needed to reach their emissions reduction targets during the
previous 12 months.
An important reason for this foot-dragging has been that the issue has not reached the
top of the public agenda. YouGov (2015, 2020) surveys from 2010 to the autumn of 2018
reveal that – apart from a brief rise during the floods of February 2014 that dissipated
almost immediately afterwards – environmental issues in general were only mentioned as
one of the three top issues facing the country by approximately 1 in every 10 people. This
has risen notably since in tandem with the Extinction Rebellion protests, though, as of
February 2020, it is still named as one of the three top issues by fewer than 3 in every 10
people. And when individuals are asked to choose just one issue, Ipsos MORI (2020)
polling from December 2019 reveals that environmental issues are mentioned by just 1 in
every 20 people. Political parties and governments tend to prioritise the issues that are
most important to the electorate given that, with limited time and resources, this strategy
may most efficiently increase their prospects at the next election (Anderson et al., 2017:
3). Thus, all else being equal, they are unlikely to implement climate change policies in
the absence of widespread societal pressure.
Moving one step further back along the chain, what makes this particularly difficult to
remedy is that the public do not universally accept the scientific consensus. In Britain,
surveys from both 2014 and late 2016/early 2017 show that only 37% and 36% of the
population, respectively, believe that climate change is caused either mainly or entirely by
human activity (Capstick et al., 2015; Fisher et al., 2018). In other surveys from late 2015
and the first half of 2016 where individuals did not have to assign a degree of human
responsibility for climate change, approximately 60% of respondents thought that humans
had some responsibility for climate change (Kenny, 2018; 2020). While believing in
humans’ contribution to climate change does not automatically equate with supporting
mitigation measures – as has been shown in a British study examining the relationship
between belief in anthropogenic climate change and support for a net-zero emissions target
by 2050 (Fisher, 2019) – individuals who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change
are much less likely to prioritise action on climate change (Krosnick et al., 2006; Van Der
Linden et al., 2015) given that they either believe it is due to natural factors or even that it
is not occurring at all. Thus, the disjunction between the scientific consensus and public
belief is likely playing an intermediary role in holding back progress on implementing the
climate change policies that are required to limit increases in global surface temperature.
In this article, I examine the correlates of belief in anthropogenic climate change in
Britain. First, I test whether the demographic factors that are most associated with climate
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