During the spring heat wave, Europe registered an estimated 800 so-called “surplus deaths”. Meanwhile in Germany, deaths by heat are not even recorded in German death certificates. Surplus death is the official term used when more people are dying than in a normal month.

Combatting global warming requires political action and such action requires politicians who, as a new study shows, are rather oblivions when it comes to global warming. Whether politicians in Germany, for example, implement climate actions programs combatting global warming depends on their perception of voters’ willingness to accept measures to fight global warming.

A recent survey, conducted in Germany, sampled German politicians via their professional email addresses. Its task was to compare the perception of 1,600 German politicians of what they assumed to be the willingness of the German people to support climate action with the actual willingness of the German people to support climate action. On the one hand is the “perception” of German politician about the German population. On the other hand, is the actual willingness of Germans to support climate action. You guessed it. Both do not match.

Across all political parties, German politicians seriously underestimate the public acceptance of taxes and laws combatting global warming. Politicians also seriously misjudge the people’s willingness to contribute 1% of income to fight global warming.

This phenomenon might best be called the “global warming misjudgment effect”. Surprisingly, the global warming misjudgment effect is even more pronounced among German politicians (what politicians think about the general public) than among Germany’s population (what people think about other people). It gets worse, the global warming misjudgment effect is the most severe in those policy areas that are most effective in combatting global warming.

All this means that to effectively combat global warming what is require is raising awareness – not so much among Germany’s population in general – but, surprisingly, in Germany’s political sphere. What Germany’s needs is to build actual public support for climate action among politicians – not so much the general public. In short, the people know. Politicians do not. Worse, they falsely assume that the public is not supporting global warming measures while in reality, the people do.

Not so much for Germans as such but for German politicians, combatting global warming seems to be a pressing challenge. Overall, it has been widely known that corporate behavior (what corporations do), capitalism as such and the way (over)consumerism is set up is ultimately the cause of global warming. This has been identified as the “anthropocene” – the human impact on climate and as the “capitaloscene” – capitalism’s ravaging impact on the climate. Both mark today’s geological epoch defined by the period in Earth’s history when corporate and human activity became the dominant influence on the planet’s climate, ecosystems, and geology.

Yet, it is – unfortunately, very likely that Germany’s misjudging politicians need to be part of the solution. This is because stopping and if possible reversing global warming will require collective action. Only as a collective can human beings implement the necessary global warming mitigation measures to stop humanity from driving down the highway towards clime hell.

Many of Germany’s previous surveys have found widespread support for such climate action among, not just the German population but also the global population. Yet, to effectively fighting global warming commands not only individual behavior change, but even more also structural measures like stopping pollution, reducing state subsidies to polluters, getting though of corporate greenwasching, higher carbon taxes, stronger support for renewable energy sources and so on.

Many of these measures need to be implemented by policy makers. Yet, it is exactly those policy makers who hold stark misconceptions about people’s support for climate action. Worse, not only German policy makers act on what they believe their voters’ opinion believe to be. And this is the point where German politicians get it horribly wrong.

In other words, it is crucial that policy makers accurately understand, judge and estimate the reality of existing public support for global warming measures. Astoundingly, actual research about the accuracy of policy makers’ perceptions of public support for action against global warming remains rather scant. In other words, common sense is not so common.

To address the perception-vs.-reality problem of the global warming misjudgment effect, politicians have been contacted, in this survey, to ascertain what German politicians think about the German population’s willingness to support action against global warming.

In a second step, this has been compared with the actual willingness – as self-reported by Germans. It reflects the fact that climate scientists have conclusive evidence for global warming. Whenever scientists use words like “conclusive evidence”, they mean to say, “we know”. There is no longer any debate.

For example, there is no debate that Charles Darwin was right. The same goes for Isaac Newtown and Albert Einstein or that distance between Earth and the Moon of about 384,400km. There is no debate. We know. The same goes for global warming and the anthropocene. We know.

Despite these facts, the general public itself also underestimates the widespread support for climate policies among itself – a rather unsurprising finding. In other words, we are greener than we think. We support sustainability stronger than we think and we want to protect Earth to a much greater degree than we think other people will also do. We support measures against global warming and for sustainability very strongly.

Such misperceptions and under-estimations reflect the global warming misjudgment effect. This is the widespread. Sadly, this is also a “collective” misperception of a social norm pertaining to what one’s own group thinks about itself. For example, even though most believe that a particular view – like fighting global warming – is prevalent in their own group, surprisingly, most believe that others do not hold that view.

The global warming misjudgment effect is the misperception of other people’s views about whether or not other people approve or disapprove of a global warming action. It is also the misjudgment of how common environmentally sustainable behavior is and whether or not other people actually engage in a climate action.

This effect has been documented many times including misjudging aggressive and criminal behavior, drinking, underrating the actual support for affirmative action and underestimating support for gender equality among other people.

In the area of action against global warming, large-scale studies show that the public misperceives how widespread support for climate action is. Support is stronger than we think. As a consequence, many citizens underestimate their fellow citizen’s willingness to see global warming as a problem.

A large majority of Americans, for example – up to 80% to 90% – underestimated the real concern others have about global warming and about the level they support for climate policies. Other studies unearthed that people underestimate the portion of citizens who believe global warming is real and is caused by human intervention.

A relatively large study – a worldwide survey – found that most people are even willing to actively combat global warming by contributing 1% of their income. Worse, people substantially underestimated the willingness of others to do the same.

It is not only the public in general that falls into the trap of the global warming misjudgment effect. Attendees of a UN’s Environment Assembly – including media people and surprisingly even NGOs and governments – misjudged the willingness to contribute 1% of their income.

The global warming misjudgment effect among the public is a barrier to action on global warming. This is because people’s willingness to contribute to a common good such as environmental protection also depends on their view of others and their willingness to contribute as well.

Yet, it gets more serious as such misperceptions are also widespread among policy makers. The global warming misjudgment effect is strongly present in politicians. This constitutes an even more challenging obstacle to enacting on environmental policies than the misperceptions among the public.

Simply because politicians have more power and resources to implement pro-environmental and sustainable policies. Unfortunately, the environmental action of politician often reflects both their own preferences and – most significantly – their, how ever wrong they may be – (mis)perception of public opinion.

Indeed, in the domain of environmental policies, the perception of politicians of the public opinion on global warming links the public to the action or inaction of politicians. Sadly, the perceptions politicians hold of the public opinion on global warming are often far from accurate.

Like many ordinary people, politicians too tend to omit the opinions of voters with whom they disagree – for example, on environmental policies. It gets worse. Politicians also overestimate how strongly public opinion is shaped by their own messages. Simultaneously, they tend to underestimate how strongly such views are shaped by messages people receive from family, friends, peers, their immediate social surrounding and corporate mass-media.

Back on the unperceived support for climate policies, even the staff of politicians – often professionally trained policy advisors – tend to miscalculate the public support for regulating on CO₂ emissions. This extends to elected politicians from county, municipality and towns. They too perceive the public endorsement for solutions to global warming lower than it actually is. The self-reported endorsement of pre-environmental policies is way higher than they thought it to be.

Meanwhile, a large sample of elected politicians from all levels of Germany’s federal system—from the highest levels down to local politicians—focused on four areas of support for action on global warming:

1. The acceptance of environmental policies regarding three types of policy measures: information, taxes, and laws.
2. The desire for government to support action against global warming.
3. The awareness of the problem of global warming.
4. The willingness to contribute 1% of their income towards environmental sustainability.

Across all parliamentary levels and political parties, there is a substantial underestimation of public support for action on global warming. The misperceptions and misjudgments among politicians are far greater than those among the general public.

For example, almost half of Germans would be willing to donate 1% of their own income to climate protection. Politicians estimated this proportion of the population to be less than a fifth. Virtually the same applies to environmental policies involving more information being provided to the public, higher taxes for polluters, and stricter laws to safeguard the environment. This also extends to the government improving general awareness of global warming.

Worse, the deeper one digs into environmental policies, the more pronounced the global warming misjudgment effect becomes. In short, the more serious the issue, the less politicians think the public would support them in introducing serious measures to protect the environment. The global warming misjudgment effect tells us that this is a serious error on the part of politicians.

In the end, politicians’ misjudgment of the level of public support for action against global warming represents yet another important hurdle to effective climate policy.

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