New monitoring project "PHA²SE" started

A first survey with more than 1,500 participants was conducted at the end of July. Among other things, it recorded the approval of various recommendations in the areas of energy, mobility, building renovation and nutrition, which had previously been developed by the Citizens' Climate Council in cooperation with scientists. "We were able to establish that most of the climate protection measures are also supported by the population as a whole," says Cornelia Betsch, summarising the results of the first survey. This is positive and could motivate political decision-makers to implement ambitious climate protection goals. About two-thirds of the respondents said that the guidelines and recommendations should be implemented by the new federal government. Of course, not all measures are equally popular, according to the researcher. While the expansion of local transport or the reduction of factory farming were supported by a particularly large number of respondents, more persuasion would be needed for the introduction of a general speed limit or the replacement of oil and gas heating systems, for example. "It is particularly interesting that the approval of the individual measures is higher above all when the respondents were concerned about the health consequences of climate change, such as increasing heat or the spread of disease vectors," add Philipp Sprengholz and Lena Lehrer, collaborators in the project. Based on these initial findings, further research is now planned. A network of different partners is currently being formed for this purpose.

Interested parties can view the previous and future results on the project's website at: https://projekte.uni-erfurt.de/pha2se