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Limiting climate change requires research on climate action

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To realize ambitious climate targets, research should focus more on effective ways to encourage rapid and wide-scale changes in climate mitigation actions, and less on understanding climate change beliefs.

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Fig. 1: Belief in the reality of climate change.
Fig. 2: Beliefs about the causes of climate change.
Fig. 3: Preferences for energy sources in electricity production.

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Acknowledgements

I thank T. Bouman for his help with the data analyses, and S. Johnson-Zawadzki for feedback on a draft version of the paper. The module ‘Public attitudes to climate change, energy security, and energy preferences’ of Round 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS8) was developed by W. Poortinga, G. Böhm, S. Fisher, L. Steg and L. Whitmarsh.

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  1. Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Linda Steg

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  1. Linda Steg
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Correspondence to Linda Steg.

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Steg, L. Limiting climate change requires research on climate action. Nature Clim Change 8, 759–761 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0269-8

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