Rationing of goods such as meat and fuel can both effectively and fairly reduce consumption with high climate impact. Almost 40% of the public say they could accept such measures. These are the findings of new research from the Climate Change Leadership Group at Uppsala University.
“Rationing may seem dramatic, 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,” explains Oskar Lindgren, at the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University, who led the study, now published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
The new study involving nearly 9,000 people in Brazil, India, Germany, South Africa and the United States compares the acceptability of rationing fuel and so-called “emission-intensive” food, such as meat, with the acceptability of taxes on the same products.