• Energy Research

A follow-up study to Brüggemann et al. (2017), The appeasement effect of a United Nations climate summit on the German public Abstract Heat waves occurring around the world, outspoken warnings from scientists, international climate ac-tivism, and ensuing political debates on climate protection have ensured that climate change has finally caught the public’s attention. This comparative analysis of public opinion during three UN climate sum-mits illustrates the awakening of public awareness of and an increased willingness to actively engage with climate change, probably as the cumulative effect of this combination of events. Comparing cli-mate change awareness, communicative engagement, knowledge, attitudes, and climate-friendly be-haviour during the 2015 (n = 1,477), 2018 (n = 1,044) and 2019 (n = 1,000) UN climate summits, we find major and consistently positive changes in various forms of active engagement with the issue. These results indicate that the appeasement effect observed in an earlier study during the 2015 Paris summit is over: the German public is now ready to take decisive steps to tackle the climate problem.

Climate change poses a challenge to countries across the world, with news media being an important source of information on the issue. To understand how and how much news media cover climate change, this study compares coverage in ten countries from the Global North and the Global South between 2006 and 2018 (N = 71,674). Based on a panel analysis, we illustrate that news media attention varies across countries and is often associated with political, scientific, and (partly) societal focusing events. Based on an automated content analysis, we also find that news media do not only cover ecological changes or climate science, but that they focus predominantly on the societal dimension of climate change: They emphasize how humans are aware of, affected by, battle, or cause climate change. Overall, the study illustrates important differences between the Global North and the Global South. While countries from the Global North cover climate change more frequently, countries from the Global South focus more on its challenges and implications for society at large, i.e., the societal dimension of climate change.