A new study in the journal Risk Sciences models how climate disinformation can erode public support for carbon taxes and trigger a sharp drop in policy ambition. Researchers from University College Dublin and the ILaVita Foundation split the population into informed and misinformed agents, then compared carbon tax outcomes under majority voting versus a politically constrained planner. The result: majority voting can deliver stronger early carbon pricing, but it is fragile. Once disinformation flips the informed majority, the tax target falls off a cliff. The study also finds that late or persistent disinformation is especially damaging because it arrives after the shift to stronger climate policy has begun, pushing both policy regimes toward hothouse warming trajectories. A strong counter-disinformation intervention, however, can nearly offset an early shock and bring outcomes close to the no-disinformation benchmark. That points to information policy as a practical part of keeping carbon pricing politically viable.
