MainMajor sustainability objectives could be achieved by global approaches to mitigating climate change and poverty that woud involve transfers from high- to lower-income countries1,2,3,4,5,6. In particular, global carbon pricing is widely regarded by economists as the reference climate policy, as it would efficiently correct the carbon emissions externality. Specifically, a version of global carbon pricing as a system based upon tradable permits for carbon emissions is prominently discussed in environmental economics7,8,9,10,11,12,13. It would work as follows: A cap on carbon emissions to limit global warming below 2 °C is implemented. Emissions rights compatible with the carbon budget are auctioned each year to polluting firms and fund a global basic income, alleviating extreme poverty. These emission rights would be allocated equally among human adults, yielding redistribution from richer to poorer countries. It would combine long-term effectiveness, feasibility, equity and simplicity7. We call this approach to global carbon pricing the Global Climate Scheme (GCS). Although international negotiations have not yet led to ambitious globally redistributive policies, some recent prominent attempts are that the International Maritime Organization adopted a global carbon pricing mechanism on maritime fuel; the African Union calls for a global carbon taxation regime14, the United Nations (UN) are setting up a Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation15 and the G20 seeks global cooperation on the taxation of billionaires16.We study a key factor for implementing global policies: the support of citizens. The first piece of evidence is a global survey on 40,680 respondents from 20 high- and middle-income countries. It reveals substantial support for global climate policies and, in addition, for a global tax on the wealthiest aimed at financing low-income countries’ development. Surprisingly, even in wealthy nations that would bear the burden of such globally redistributive policies, majorities of citizens express support for them. To better understand public support for global policies in high-income countries, the main analysis of this Article is conducted with surveys among 8,000 respondents from France, Germany, Spain, the UK and the USA. The focus of the Western surveys is to study how respondents react to the key trade-off between the benefits and costs of globally redistributive climate policies. In our survey, respondents are made aware of the cost that the GCS entails for their country’s people, that is, average Westerners would incur a net loss from the policy. Our main result is that the GCS is supported by three quarters of Europeans and more than half of Americans.Furthermore, we test the robustness of this conclusion by a wide variety of methods. First, we control for social desirability bias using a list experiment. We find no evidence that people exaggerate their support in the direct question. Second, to assess whether the support would diminish in a context that approaches real stakes, we ask respondents whether they are willing to sign a petition in favour of the GCS, after informing them that the results of the survey question will be communicated to their head of state’s office. The support is sustained in an environment that approaches real stakes. Third, we carry out conjoint analyses to neutralize experimenter demand and investigate the priority given to global policies compared with other types of policy. Conjoint analyses reveal that a political platform is more likely to be preferred if it contains the GCS or a global tax on millionaires, and that global policies rank high in the prioritization of policies. Our randomized experiments also show that a candidate would not lose vote intentions by endorsing the GCS, and might even gain up to 11 points in France. Fourth, an analysis of open-ended fields indicates that the appeal of the GCS comes from its international nature and its impacts on climate, more than on global poverty. To put our main finding in context, we also test support for other global policies and examine whether people’s values are univeralistic. Support is very strong for a global tax on millionaires (69% in the USA, 84% in Europe), and the median respondent prefers to allocate 30% of the revenues of such a tax to low-income countries. Majorities are willing to increase foreign aid, but only if some conditions are respected, such as making sure the aid is well spent and other high-income countries also increase their contribution. Questions on universalistic values, including a donation experiment, confirm the congruence of underlying values with the support for specific policies. The diverse approaches summarized also help to understand what drives support for different policies. For instance, the evidence indicates that one key reason why increasing foreign aid is not as popular as global policies lies in its unilateral nature.Overall, our results point to strong and genuine support for global climate and redistributive policies, as our experiments confirm the stated support found in direct questions. They contribute to a body of literature on attitudes towards climate policy, which confirms that climate policy is preferred at a global level17,18,19,20, where it is more effective and fair. While 3,354 economists supported a national carbon tax financing equal cash transfers in the Wall Street Journal21, numerous surveys have shown that public support for such policy is mixed22,23,24,25,26,27. Meanwhile, the GCS— the global version of this policy—is largely supported, despite higher costs in high-income countries. In the Discussion, we offer potential explanations that could reconcile the strong support for global policies with their lack of prominence in the public debate.LiteratureInternational surveys have shown widespread support for costly climate action23,28. For instance, representative surveys in 125 countries covering 96% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions show that 69% of the global population express willingness to contribute 1% of their income to fight global warming29. International surveys have also uncovered near consensus that “present economic differences between rich and poor countries are too large” (overall, 78% agree and 5% disagree) in each of 29 countries30.Yet, few prior attitudinal surveys have examined global redistributive policies. A notable exception tests the support for six variants of a global carbon tax on samples in five countries, representative along gender and age31. For a given variant, the sample size is about 167 respondents per country. They find over 80% support for any variant in India, between 50% and 65% in Australia, the UK and South Africa, and 43% to 59% in the USA, depending on the variant. Notably, the support for a global carbon tax funding an equal cash transfer for each human is close to 50% in high-income countries.Further evidence of the popularity of global redistribution is provided by the finding that 66% of Americans support providing “financial aid and technical support to developing countries that agree to limit their greenhouse gas emissions”32. In addition, 90% of Germans want some degree of global redistribution33. Besides, in surveys conducted in Brazil, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA, support ranges from 55% to 74% for “a global democracy including both a global government and a global parliament, directly elected by the world population, to recommend and implement policies on global issues”, and similar support is found in surveys over 17 countries34,35.The Supplementary Information contains a broader literature review including further attitudinal surveys on global policies; prior work on attitudes towards climate burden sharing, attitudes towards foreign aid, global carbon pricing, global redistribution, basic income and global democracy.ResultsDataWe use unanalysed questions from a global survey conducted in 2021 that involved 40,680 respondents from 20 countries, representing approximately 72% of global CO2 emissions. This survey (henceforth global survey) serves as the basis for measuring stated support for various global policies worldwide, including the GCS. The questions on national policies of the global survey are analysed by Dechezleprêtre et al. (2025)23. To delve deeper into the sincerity and rationales behind support for the GCS and attitudes towards global policies, global redistribution and universalistic values, we conducted further surveys in 2023 (henceforth Western surveys). These surveys are based on a sample of 8,000 respondents from France, Germany, Spain, the UK and the USA. The European survey (Eu) comprises 3,000 respondents, while the US sample was collected in two separate waves: US1 with 3,000 respondents and US2 with 2,000 respondents. The survey questions in both the European and US surveys are almost identical (Fig. 1), except for an additional question in US2 that uses results from US1 to assess the bandwagon effect and variations in policy designs in some questions.Fig. 1: Structure of the Western surveys.See also Supplementary Fig. 41 for the treatment branches.Full size imageThe Western surveys ensured broad representativeness along key dimensions: gender, income, age, highest diploma and degree of urbanization. The Eu survey is also representative of its four countries in terms of population size, while the US1 and US2 surveys are representative in terms of region and ethnicity. Supplementary Tables 6 and 7 detail how our samples match population frequencies. More detail on data collection is given in the Methods. The questionnaires used in the surveys are provided in Supplementary Sections C and D.Global supportWe find strong support for climate policies enacted at the global level when analysing the global survey (Fig. 2). When asked ‘At which level(s) do you think public policies to tackle climate change need to be put in place?’, 70% (in the USA) to 94% (in Japan) choose the global level. The next most popular choice is the federal or continental level, favoured by 52% of Americans and less than half of European respondents. Local policies receive the least support. This preference for climate policies implemented at the global scale is in line with earlier contributions18,19,36 and consistent with individuals’ concerns for the fairness and effectiveness of such policies, which have been identified as two of the three key determinants of support, besides self-interest22,23,37. It could also stem from a preference for conditional cooperation38, even if previous studies suggest that the support for climate policies does not depend on climate action abroad39,40,41.Fig. 2: Relative support for global climate policies.The numbers represent relative support, that is, the share of ‘Somewhat support’ or ‘Strongly support’ among non-indifferent answers (in per cent, n = 40,680). Shares of indifferent answers range from 11% to 48%, with quartiles 20%, 27% and 33%. The colour blue denotes a relative majority. See Supplementary Fig. 4 for the absolute support (questions A–I). In Denmark, France and the USA, the questions with an asterisk were asked differently (c.f. question F).Source dataFull size imageAmong the four global climate policies examined, three policies garner high support across all countries (Fig. 2). These policies include a global democratic assembly on climate change, a global tax on millionaires to finance low-income countries contingent on their climate action, and a global carbon budget of +2 °C divided among countries based on tradable shares (or ‘global quota’), with the allocation of country shares unspecified (see wording in Supplementary Section C). The three policies garner a majority of absolute support (that is, ‘somewhat’ or ‘strong’ support) in all countries (except in the USA for the global assembly, 48% absolute support). In high-income countries, the global quota policy obtains 64% absolute support and 84% relative support (that is, excluding ‘indifferent’ answers).Following the support for the global quota, respondents are asked about their preferences for dividing the carbon budget among countries, as depicted in the third block of Fig. 2. Consistent with the existing literature (Supplementary Section A.1.2), an equal per capita allocation of emission rights emerges as the preferred burden-sharing principle, garnering absolute majority support in all countries and never below 84% relative support. Taking into account historical responsibilities or vulnerability to climate damages is also popular, albeit with less consensus, while grandfathering (that is, allocation of emission shares in proportion to current emissions) receives the least support in all countries.A global carbon tax that funds a global basic income should produce the same distributional outcomes as a global tradable quota with equal per capita emission rights (to the extent that the carbon price is the same and provided that each country returns the revenues from emissions trading equally to its citizens). The support for the global carbon tax is also tested, and its redistributive effects—the average increase in expenditures along with the amount of the basic income—are specified to the respondents explicitly (see box on 'The Global Climate Scheme' and Supplementary Section D, p. 64). The support for the carbon tax is lower than for the quota (t(34,442) = −76, P