Perceptions of the Role of Science, Progress, and Growth in the Context of Environmental Crises in Europe and Beyond

This chapter explores Europeans’ perception of the role of science and progress in worsening or solving the global environmental crises. Based on regressions with the ISSP Environment 2020 data and time series on four ISSP Environment surveys, from 1993 to 2020, we conduct a comparative and longitudinal study of opinions across Europe, and between Europe and the rest of the world, in which we test three main hypotheses. The first hypothesis: we test whether economic and social concerns are prioritized over environmental issues in correlation with national per capita income. The second hypothesis explores regional differences in the evaluation of the impact of science and economic growth on the global environmental crisis. With the third hypothesis, we evaluate the traction of the idea of degrowth as a solution to the global environmental crises and its correlation to national per capita income. Across all three questions, we also pursued additional enquiries with the examination of the impact of secondary, demographic variables, such as age, education, and occupation. This study allows us to uncover important differences both within Europe, with the emergence of three European clusters, as well as globally, with respondents from emerging economies displaying at times radically different opinions from those of high-income countries. Our results, while vindicating the affluence hypothesis and showing that trust in the power of science and growth to solve environmental issues is largely dependent on national income, show that there is no clear correlation between the popularity of degrowth and national income level, except within Europe.