Climate Policy Kills Jobs, They Say: Unveiling Economic Fears and Ideological Motives behind Policy Resistance

• In Event: Greener Futures in Tense Times: Navigating Environmental Policy, Political Ideology, and Economic Well-Being

Abstract

Persistent resistance to climate mitigation policies is partly attributed to concerns about potential adverse economic consequences, especially regarding job stability and broader national economic health. The dominant policy-kills-jobs narrative, used by opposition groups among both the public and politicians, underscores these fears. What has received limited scholarly attention so far is the narrative’s dual facets. While this narrative might reflect genuine economic worries arising from perceived employment vulnerabilities, it might also be a mere tool to obscure other political and ideological motives against climate policies. Efforts have been made by researchers and journalists to counter the popular job-killing narrative, offering extensive evidence that such policies, overall, do not harm the economy. But if ideological motives are also fueling policy resistance, such efforts to correct people’s perceptions about a policy’s negative economic impacts or offer targeted compensation to the policy’s economic “losers” would have a limited role in shifting public opinions. Thus, determining the relative influence of economic fears and ideological motives on policy resistance is crucial for refining future policy design and communication.

To address these issues, this paper first introduces a novel metric to gauge the relative resilience of various existing occupations in the face of new climate policies. Second, utilizing an original survey in the UK and the aforementioned metric, we analyze the magnitude and the sources of discrepancies in job risk perceptions. Third and most importantly, based on an experiment embedded in the survey, we investigate whether people update their stance on climate policies based on the disparity (or lack thereof) between their initial perceptions and an objective risk assessment related to their occupations. Our upcoming analyses will also determine if the degree of belief and preference update correlates with individual attributes, including their ideological beliefs and demographics. The relationship between ideological beliefs and economic concerns is a source of tension and confusion in the debate on many politicized issues beyond climate, including, but not limited to, migration and public health.

Authors

• Aya Kachi, University of Basel / KAPSARC School of Public Policy

• Manuel Ebner, University of Basel

• Simon Andres Montfort, University of Bern