A Better Life in a Decarbonized Society

Pivoting Japanese public opinion from a "sacrifice" framing to an "affluence" framing

Close your eyes. When you hear the phase “climate change solutions,” what associations arise in your mind? Solar panels? The buzzword “Green Transformation?” Maybe “conservation,” “sacrifice,” “ inconvenience,” or “endurance (gaman)?”

Photo by Hadija Saidi on Unsplash

For many people in Japan, thinking about measures to solve climate change conjures up images of personal sacrifice and a diminished quality of life. If we look at the data from a 2015 survey of citizens around the world, it becomes very clear that Japanese citizens are uniquely pessimistic about decarbonization. When asked what “measures to fight climate change” means for them, the share of people who answered that they’re “mostly an opportunity to improve our quality of life” was 66.24%, and that share among G7 countries was 61.64%.