Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 24;16(3):e0248268. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248268. eCollection 2021.
Australia is a relative laggard on climate policy, amidst social and political fractures despite rising support for climate policy in opinion polls. In the 2019 Australian federal election, which was dubbed the 'climate election', the opposition campaigned on comparatively ambitious climate action but the government was returned on a status quo policy. We explore the social-political determinants of climate attitudes and how they are positioned in relation to voting behaviour, in the context of the 2019 election. We use a large nationally representative survey of Australian voters (n = 2,033), and employ univariate and multivariate ordinal logistic regression models to uncover correlates. We find that a large majority of voters think it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the importance given to emissions reductions is sharply divided along lines of political party preference. Holding pro-climate action attitudes consistently correlates with voting for progressive political parties and having higher levels of education. We also find a strong age cohort divide, with younger people holding stronger pro-climate attitudes than older people, raising the question whether we are seeing the emergence of a new generation expressing strong pro-climate action and progressive political attitudes that will persist over time. We conduct population ageing scenarios to project changes to public opinion, by age group, into the future. These indicate that strong support for climate action would increase by about four percentage points over the coming decade as younger voters replace the old, if attitudes within cohorts remained fixed. We conclude that while cleavages in climate attitudes in Australia are set to continue, efforts to promote climate delay are bound to have a limited shelf life as a growing majority of voters accepts the need for climate action.
澳大利亚在气候政策方面相对滞后，尽管民意调查显示越来越多的人支持气候政策，但社会和政治分歧依然存在。在 2019 年澳大利亚联邦选举中，这场选举被称为“气候选举”，反对派提出了相对激进的气候行动方案，但政府却以维持现状的政策赢得了选举。我们探讨了气候态度的社会政治决定因素，以及它们在 2019 年选举背景下如何与投票行为相关联。我们使用了一项针对澳大利亚选民（n=2033）的大型全国代表性调查，并采用单变量和多变量有序逻辑回归模型来揭示相关因素。我们发现，绝大多数选民认为澳大利亚减少温室气体排放很重要。然而，对于减排的重视程度却因政党偏好的不同而存在明显分歧。持有支持气候行动的态度与投票支持进步政党和接受更高水平的教育密切相关。我们还发现了一个强烈的年龄群体分歧，年轻人比老年人更强烈地持有支持气候的态度，这引发了一个问题，即我们是否正在看到新一代人表达出强烈的支持气候行动和进步政治态度，这种态度是否会随着时间的推移而持续下去。我们进行了人口老龄化情景模拟，以预测未来按年龄组划分的公众舆论变化。这些情景表明，如果各年龄群体的态度保持不变，未来十年内，随着年轻选民取代老年选民，支持气候行动的强烈意愿将增加约四个百分点。我们的结论是，尽管澳大利亚的气候态度分歧可能会继续存在，但由于越来越多的选民接受了采取气候行动的必要性，推迟采取气候行动的努力势必会有一个有限的保质期。
