Essays on Climate Change

Chapter 1 conducts a survey among college students in Texas to assess their willingness to pay for renewable energy to tackle climate change. An individual with a good level of climate awareness is 9.38% more willing to pay extra for renewable energy. Comparably, people with an excellent level of awareness are 23% more likely to financially favor renewable energy than others, given the willingness to pay those with a good level of awareness. At least 70% of survey participants want to pay at least $0.50, and 26% are willing to pay $1.50 more per gallon of gasoline to slow down climate change. Utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, I analyze the national-level data to extrapolate the individual-level results on a macroeconomic level. I find that a 1% increase in awareness level would cause an increase in REC by 0.32%, but a $1 increase in the oil price would lead to a rise in REC only by 0.002%. The environmental stringency index (EER), newspaper coverage of climate change (NC), and education (CG) all have statistically significant effects on REC. However, the renewable energy investment (RI), Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), and climate extreme index (CE) have no substantial impact on REC. In Chapter 2, I examine the climate change effect on environmental stringency through global comparative analysis across G7 countries, China, India, and Russia, for the period 1990-2022. The method of moment quantile regression (MMQR) shows a positive and significant effect of climate change on the Environmental Stringency Index (ESI), with countries exhibiting higher baseline stringency responding more aggressively to rising temperatures. The economic growth, the level of technological development, trade openness, and inflation strongly also significantly influence environmental policies of a country. This study emphasizes the challenge of balancing economic growth with environmental protection, which gives useful guidance for shaping policies to tackle climate issues.