People around the world are roughly as accepting of the rationing of fossil fuels and high climate-impact foods like meat as they are of taxation, according to a new study from the Climate Change Leadership group at Sweden’s Uppsala University. The findings indicate that rationing may be a viable approach to curbing emissions.
The study surveyed over 8,600 people in Brazil, India, Germany, South America and the US, comparing acceptance for rationing fuel and high-emission foods like meat versus taxing these same products. The study is the first of its kind, expanding on research that has largely focused on economic instruments like carbon taxes as a means of curtailing consumption that negatively impacts the climate.
“Rationing may seem dramatic,” Oskar Lindgren, the doctoral student who led the study, said in a press release, “but so is climate change. This may explain why support is rather high. One advantage of rationing is that it can be perceived as fair, if made independent of income. Policies perceived as fair often enjoy higher levels of acceptance.”
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Americans proved the least open to either mechanism to curb fossil fuel and emission-intensive food consumption, but 33 percent of survey respondents overall were open to rationing meat and other high-impact foods, while 44 percent were prepared for such items to be taxed. When it came to fossil fuels, there was similar overall acceptance for rationing (38 percent) and taxation (39 percent).
Those who expressed concern about climate change, a majority across all countries, were the most likely to support rationing. Younger and more educated individuals also tended to have a more positive attitude toward the instrument.
Buoyed by these “encouraging” findings, researchers believe there is more work to be done investigating this mechanism for curbing consumption. “More research is now needed on attitudes towards rationing and the design of such policy instruments,” Lindgren says.
