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LSE survey of more than 9,000 scientists ties faith in technology to less climate activism
Scientists who think technology will largely solve climate change are 23% less likely to petition or protest, an LSE survey of over 9,000 researchers found. The answers are self-reported, and they leave open whether optimism drives the inaction or merely accompanies it.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- The same group was 18% less likely to make high-impact lifestyle changes, such as cutting flights or eating a mostly vegan or vegetarian diet.
- Asked whether technology will largely solve the problems caused by climate change, 27% of respondents agreed, 44% disagreed and 29% were undecided.
- Techno-optimism was most common among scientists with right-leaning political views and among those working in applied and natural sciences.
- Fabian Dablander led the study, which appears in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision Anyone citing the 23% gap to argue for less technology-centred climate messaging first has to rule out political leaning as the driver, because optimism is concentrated on the right.
- constraint The respondents are researchers, so campaigns aimed at the general public cannot borrow the 23% and 18% figures until someone surveys non-scientists.
- exposure High-earning climate academics now face a named senior critic arguing that faith in technology excuses their own emissions, a charge he bases on experience and not on the survey data.
Twenty-three percent is a relative gap [2]. How much behaviour sits behind it depends on how often the doubters sign petitions or protest in the first place. The Guardian's report of the paper does not include those base rates, and it does not say whether the 23% and 18% gaps hold after adjusting for politics and discipline [2][1].
The groups are big. Apply the 27% and 44% shares to a sample of more than 9,000 and you get upward of 2,400 techno-optimists and roughly 4,000 doubters [3][4][15][16]. Samples that size reduce the role of chance. They do less against confounding, and the survey's own results supply a candidate: optimism clusters among right-leaning scientists [7]. Suppose political leaning on its own makes a researcher less inclined to march or to fly less. Optimism would then line up with inaction even if it caused none of it.
Dablander, the lead author, describes the result as co-occurrence [6]. "Strikingly, we see the same tendency at the individual level, with greater faith in technological solutions going hand in hand with less engagement in climate action," he said [9]. He sets it beside a political argument. "Technological solutions are often politically attractive because they promise to address climate change without requiring changes to how people live and consume," he said [8]. His concern is that the belief leads to over-reliance on unproven solutions at the expense of broader socioeconomic change [10].
Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester was not involved in the study. He spoke from his experience of highly paid climate academics [12]. Part of his account runs in the other direction. In his telling, the belief suits people already living lives "that contribute disproportionately to the problem" [13]. He said the "accompanying faith in future technological salvation provides another crutch: a way of postponing difficult choices today by placing hope in solutions that may arrive tomorrow" [14]. If the comfortable life comes first and the optimism follows, the survey would look the same. The scientists reported their own petitions, protests, flights and diets, and those reported results fit both orderings [5].
I think the association is credible at this sample size. I'd also call the crowd-out reading plausible, on the condition that the gaps survive adjustment for political leaning. Dablander's closing claim does not depend on which way the causation runs. "Yet technology cannot substitute for the broader societal changes and large-scale shifts in consumption that are also needed," he said [11].
What to watch
- A follow-up that tracks the same scientists over time, or experimentally shifts their confidence in technology, would show whether optimism comes before the drop in petitions, protests and flights.
- Checking self-reported flight and diet changes against travel or purchase records would show whether optimists and doubters report their own behaviour equally accurately.