For decades, scientists have been reporting that climate change threatens the future of humanity, and human behaviour is exacerbating this trajectory. To limit this impact and prevent the crisis from worsening, strong government policy is needed. Climate policy can take two forms: adaptation policy addresses the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels, mass extinctions, and increasing temperatures. Mitigation policy, on the other hand, is responsible for tackling the root causes of climate change, such as transitioning away from burning fossil fuels. Both forms of policy are crucial for preventing the worsening and ongoing effects of climate change, but it has historically been difficult for governments globally to get climate policy over the line. This issue is particularly pronounced in fossil fuel nations, such as Australia.
Which ideologies stand in the way of climate policy support
There are two key barriers to support for climate change policy. The first is ideology, which is often simplified into “left” and “right”. However, in this study published in Psychological Reports, we distinguish specific ideological beliefs, in particular anti-egalitarianism and conventionalism. Anti-egalitarianism motivates the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies, including a preference for human domination over nature. So, it may be difficult for anti-egalitarianists to accept the potential for climate change to cause widespread devastation, because of their belief that we can and do influence nature, rather than the other way around.
Conventionalism can be characterised by a preference for maintaining social traditions and norms, and disliking any perceived threat to the status quo. Climate change policy, by nature, threatens that status quo, asking societies to move away from traditional economic conduct such as burning fossil fuels, and cutting down trees to allow for agricultural expansion. A transition to renewable energy likely threatens the core beliefs, and/or the existing way of life of someone with conventionalist beliefs, causing opposition to climate change policy.
How do political parties prevent citizen support for climate policy?
The other key barrier to support for climate change policy is the influence of political parties opposed to these policies, typically right-wing and conservative parties. Those who identify with a political party and see their successes and failures as personal wins and losses are more likely to endorse their party’s policies and oppose rival parties’ policies. This can occur regardless of the content of the policy, as the strength of the party identity guides its supporters in what they do and don’t believe. So, a combination of this political party identity and the ideological beliefs of a person will influence their support for something like climate policy. We conducted a study to explore the extent to which these two concepts acted as barriers to climate policy support in an Australian population.
How both ideology and political party identification block climate policy support
We found that indeed both ideology and party identification are linked to opposition to climate policy. The anti-egalitarianists, i.e., those who believe in the subtle reinforcement of social hierarchies (disagreeing with statements like “we should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups”), had stronger opposition to climate policy across the board, including mitigation and adaptation measures. It is possible that this group of people currently benefits from social inequality and believes they may need to sacrifice their position to tackle climate change.
On the other hand, those who held strong conventionalist beliefs, i.e., a preference for maintaining the status quo, were opposed to mitigation efforts but generally unoffended by adaptation measures. Given that mitigation often spells fundamental system change, such as a transition to renewable energy, it makes sense that someone generally opposed to change would feel their way of life is threatened by this type of policy.
We saw the same pattern of opposition to mitigation but not to adaptation measures among supporters of the Liberal Party, a key right-wing political party in Australia that has historically shown significant opposition to climate policy, particularly in the renewable energy space. The majority of Liberal party supporters do acknowledge that climate change is a real issue facing the Australian public and the world more broadly, meaning the relatively inoffensive adaptation measures (e.g., developing drought-tolerant crops, building flood defenses) were not opposed by this group. However, the more revolutionary mitigation measures were met with opposition, likely due to this party’s messaging against mitigation policies, especially with respect to renewable energy.
How to interpret these findings in tackling opposition to climate policy
So, our research supports the idea that it is both an ideological preference for social hierarchies and the status quo, and identification with political parties opposed to climate policy (typically right-wing and conservative parties) that drive opposition to climate change policy in Australia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the more system-disrupting type of climate policy that aims to tackle the root causes of climate change (e.g., transitioning to renewable energy) is significantly more opposed among Australians than the climate policy that addresses the inevitable oncoming effects of climate change (e.g., building flood defenses to address rising sea tides).
Since both types of policy will be needed to tackle the climate crisis, it is important for educators, activists, and policymakers to be mindful of their messaging around climate policy. Supporters of right-wing political parties, such as the Liberal Party, are likely to be more opposed to climate policy than supporters of left- and center-left parties, so they should be targeted in messaging efforts.
Further, message framing should aim to appeal to the core beliefs held by anti-egalitarians and conventionalists, who are more likely to endorse social hierarchies and maintenance of the status quo. If climate communication suggests that climate policy is not in opposition to this hierarchy, and is relatively unthreatening to existing social norms and the conservative way of life, there may be a greater chance of doing our part to fight the climate crisis in Australia.
Reference
Aarons, F., Clarke, E. J., & Klas, A. (2026). Ideological and Partisan Predictors of Support for Climate Change Policy. Psychological Reports, https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941261428074
