Responsibility for Historic Carbon Emissions and Public Support for Climate Aid

Abstract Over the past several years, international climate negotiations have concluded that the wealthiest countries should make significant financial contributions towards solutions to the climate crisis owing to their disproportionate responsibility for global warming. However, in democratic countries such as the United States, public opinion is divided about whether to use taxpayer money in this manner. We conducted a pre-registered survey from a national online pool (N = 5,065) with a built-in experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of different motivational frames associated with historic carbon emissions for increasing support for climate aid. We find that specific attribution claims that reflect a climate justice perspective do boost support for more generous climate aid, but their effects are mostly limited to Democrats. We also find that global solidarity frames had no effect on support for climate aid. Such results have important implications for climate advocacy and our understanding of climate-related attitudes.