A Call for Action: Placing Emergency on the Agenda : A Study on Irish Public Opinion and the Climate Emergency Declaration

Abstract: This study researches how public attitudes can affect policy, which is done by examining if climate change issues can be placed onto the agenda by actors outside of the policy process. The study centers on Ireland as the first nation to declare a climate emergency, with the UK taking the role of control group due to them not having made such a declaration. Ireland is therefore hypothesized to have a population that is more concerned about climate change than the UK. The public attitudes from Ireland and the UK are gathered from data collected by European Social Survey. The findings are then presented through mean comparisons to measure and compare public attitudes of the two populations. Surprisingly, the results reveal that Ireland does not have a significantly more concerned public than the UK, which causes the initial hypothesis to be rejected. This outcome leads to alternative hypotheses regarding other factors, such as differences in wealth distribution or education level, being explanatory to which part of the public that can impact the agenda. It is also concluded that the decision of Ireland to declare a climate emergency was initiated from the top, i.e., the policymakers, perhaps in order to foster public mobilization. Further studies are encouraged, to look at other factors within the public that can affect the policy agenda and explain Ireland’s declaration of a climate emergency, or to lift the focus and conduct a similar study on a larger scale.