Conference Agenda

The IPCC projects that climate change will cause substantial and growing damages,

while future generations are also expected to live in a richer and, in most scenarios,

more populous world. Public discourse, however, often frames climate change in stark and polarized terms. Using a large-scale, nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults, we provide the first comprehensive evidence on public beliefs about what climate science projects, not only about climate damages, but about the broader economic and demographic future in which those damages occur. We document widespread and systematic misperceptions: many respondents underestimate projected climate impacts, while most incorrectly believe that climate science predicts stagnant or declining global incomes and population by 2100. These belief patterns are strongly associated with climate policy support, protest approval, emotional responses, and broader expectations about the future. In a preregistered information experiment, we show that correcting misperceptions about climate impacts alone increases support for ambitious policies but also increases pessimism, while adding information on long-run growth improves outlook yet reduces policy support. The findings highlight a fundamental tradeoff in the acceptability of climate policy.

In studying the effectiveness of climate policy, previous research has mainly focused on improvements in energy efficiency or emissions within firms. However, aggregate energy intensity may also decline if energy-intensive firms exit or if energy-efficient firms gain market shares from energy-intensive competitors. This paper quantifies the contribution of these selection and reallocation channels to aggregate reductions in energy intensity and emissions. We show that both mechanisms, especially selection, play a stronger role than within-firm improvements in driving aggregate declines. We also show that energy prices can, in part, influence firm-level dynamics to lower aggregate energy intensity and emissions.

Effects on jobs carry great weight in political debates, especially for environmental policy. Previous research on the impact of environmental policy on jobs, such as Hafstead and Williams (2018) and Hafstead, Williams, and Chen (2018), finds that environmental policy reallocates workers across industries with little to no net job loss. But while those papers looked at changes in the number of jobs in different industries, they didn’t directly address the distribution of transitional labor market dynamics across workers. This paper extends those papers by classifying workers by their industry at the time of policy implementation (“initial industry”) and analyzing how the change in unemployment rates varies by initial industry over time. When we track workers by their industry at time of policy implementation, we find significant differences in short-run labor-market effects (as measured by changes in unemployment rates, earnings, and unemployment durations) across a range of policies aimed at reducing energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Unsurprisingly, we find that large negative impacts are concentrated among workers initially employed in a few carbon-intensive industries. Finally, we show that policy pre-announcement and policy phase-ins can meaningfully reduce the short-run negative employment impacts both at the aggregate level and for the most affected groups of workers.

We study how to communicate climate policy in fossil-fuel-dependent economies. For international comparability,we build on the survey of Dechezleprêtre et al. (2025) inRussia, adapting it to the local context and adding novel elements: (i) treatments referencing the national Climate Doctrine (presidential decree) and (ii) measures of trust in scientists from different fields. Russians’ climate beliefs and knowledge broadly mirror those in other countries, though skepticism is higher in fossil-fuel-rich regions. Physics-based videos raise factual understanding, while economically framed messages reduce policy support, consistent with cost salience and low trust in economists. Political authority cues, by contrast, raise support.