Climate change denial in Europe

In many Western countries, there appears to be a growing number of people who does not believe in climate change. The nature and roots of this climate change denial among general public are to date not fully understood. This chapter helps to fill this gap by studying individual and contextual determinants of different types and degrees of climate change denial including trend denial, attribution denial and uncertainty, and impact denial. Using data of the European Social Survey, results of multilevel analysis reveal different determinants of climate change among the most striking is political orientation. Individuals who place themselves on the right side of the political spectrum are more likely to deny the existence, cause, and consequences of climate change and are more likely to be uncertain about the anthropogenic cause. There is, however, also a considerable relationship between climate change denial and a countries dependency on fossil fuels. These findings suggest that that climate change denial is motivated by a complex interplay of ideological and economic factors.