Muddling through Climate Change: A Qualitative Exploration of India and U.S. Climate Experts’ Perspectives on Solutions, Pathways, and Barriers

Abstract

Climate solutions related to mitigation and adaptation vary across the United States and India, given their unique current socio-political–technological abilities and their histories. Here, we discuss results from online face-to-face interviews undertaken with 33 U.S.-based climate experts and 30 India-based climate experts. Using qualitative grounded theory, we explore open-ended responses to questions related to mitigation and adaptation and find the following: (1) there is broad agreement among experts in both countries on the main mitigation solutions focused on the decarbonization of energy systems, but (2) there are a diversity of views between experts on what to prioritize and how to achieve it. Similarly, there is substantial agreement that adaptation solutions are needed to address agriculture, water management, and infrastructure, but there is a wide variety of perspectives on other priorities and how best to proceed. Experts across both countries generally perceived mitigation as needing national policies to succeed, while adaptation is perceived as more local and challenging given the larger number of stakeholders involved in planning and implementation. Our findings indicate that experts agree on the goals of decarbonization, but there was no consensus on how best to accomplish implementation.

1. Introduction

The slow pace of the world’s response to climate change has alarmed and perplexed climate scientists, practitioners, and policymakers for decades [1,2]. Even as progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been made over the past decade (e.g., the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015) [3], countries are not undertaking sufficient changes to stay under 1.5 °C of warming above the Industrial Revolution [4]. Thus, despite decades of climate treaties and extensive scientific reports warning of the consequences, there remains no clear direction on how to prioritize or implement solutions to limit greenhouse gas emissions or to adapt to a warmer world [5]. A substantial amount of attention has been given to the disconnect between the warnings from climate scientists on the consequences of inaction and the limited response and impacts of climate policies to date [6,7]. Yet, climate experts remain critical players in shaping the policy response given their specialized knowledge, and their perspectives on how to respond to these shortcomings remain valuable.

The main dilemma that climate change presents is well-known: the hardship posed by exceeding 1.5 °C of warming will not be felt uniformly across the globe, but changing the processes that generate greenhouse gas emissions is very difficult because they are embedded widely across everyday actions [8]. Climate adaptation, which we refer to as “adjusting to the actual or expected future climate to reduce vulnerability to the effects of climate change”, presents additional complexities in how countries around the world will be affected differently by warming temperatures that are expected from existing emissions. Whereas mitigation, which we define as reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, is essential in high-income countries built on fossil-fuel economies, adaptation has widely diverging consequences based on geography, irrespective of historical emissions [9]. There is a general expectation that countries that have contributed the least to climate change are also the most vulnerable and least able to adapt to its consequences [10,11]. Concern about the disruption to local economies, worsening poverty and hunger, and increasing infrastructure costs are all areas that climate adaptation may need to address.

These difficulties hint at the vastness of the climate solution space, underscoring the challenge of halting global warming. Scholars have depicted climate change as a “hyperobject” because the challenges are “massively distributed in time and space compared to humans” to the point that it is hard to even grasp what it means for different peoples throughout the world, let alone solutions to it [12]. Estimates of national responsibility for climate damages show that the five highest emitters (the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, and India) have contributed to USD 6 trillion in economic losses [13]. Although there is limited scope for individual behaviors to address the problem, individuals are needed collectively to make system-wide changes, e.g., [14,15,16], and far more is needed in designing and implementing policies to enable low-carbon options [17]. The current modality of science communication in common discourse has not helped this problem, as many people falsely believe that others do not support climate action [18,19], potentially in part due to disinformation campaigns by some fossil-fuel stakeholders to lessen the sense of urgency to act [20,21].

1.1. Considering the Solution Space on Climate Change

One of the most touted solutions to climate change over the past 30 years is carbon pricing [22]. Carbon pricing can include voluntary offset markets, carbon credits, cap-and-trade systems, or a simple tax, each of which can help to increase consumer demand for low-carbon alternatives through financial incentives for low-carbon options and disincentives for high-carbon options [23]. Advocates of carbon pricing believe that it is the most efficient way to address climate change as it represents a market-based approach that allows companies and consumers flexibility to innovate and adjust their business models and consumption in ways that work for their own individual situations. Though many advocate for carbon pricing as part of a broader suite of policies [24], Rabe [25] argues that advocates’ attention to carbon pricing has led people to see it as being a silver bullet to fight climate change. The evidence for carbon pricing has been mixed regarding whether it has been effective in adequately mitigating climate change. In many countries, carbon pricing is viewed as politically unpopular, and efforts to enact it have not been successful. For example, in the United States, there was a failed 1990s effort to enact a carbon tax (the BTU tax) and a failed 2000s effort to enact a cap-and-trade bill; thus, there is no national-level price on carbon in the country [23]. A recent meta-analysis provides strong evidence that carbon pricing schemes are effective [26]. The authors analyze 21 carbon pricing schemes and find that 17 have led to emissions reductions ranging from 4 to 15% [26]. These findings differ greatly from a previous review that found reductions of just 2% on average [22].

Despite the slow and uneven reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increasing anecdotal evidence suggests a shift away from a primary focus on carbon pricing toward a broader set of solutions. In the United States, for example, recent national legislation has focused almost exclusively on using financial incentives (primarily subsidies) to encourage low-carbon alternatives and adaptation planning and avoiding any major financial disincentives, such as carbon pricing [27]. This reflects political theory arguments that mobilizing stakeholders who benefit from low-carbon options is important to the political process to challenge the status quo [28]. An increasing number of studies have pointed to the limitations of enacting a carbon price and the need for alternative policy tools and pathways [24,29,30].

1.2. Expert Elicitations on Climate Change

Climate solution research has used expert elicitation to help prioritize what solutions are needed. Expert elicitation is a research tool that allows qualitative and quantitative information to be assessed by experts to help shed light on issues of interest [31] and has been used in the climate space [32]. Kornek et al. [33] surveyed 917 IPCC experts, finding that they largely agreed on 14 different climate solutions as important. Using a closed-ended list of 13 predetermined obstacles, they find that, on average, experts identified that opposition from special interest groups is the most important obstacle and that technological R&D is the most important response. A potential limitation is the geographic distribution of their sample: 71% of experts resided in North America or Europe, and only 13% resided in Africa or Asia. The authors offered an interpretation that avoiding conflicts around favored solutions in the international arena was key to maintaining their viability as solutions. Similarly, Baláž et al. [34] looked for areas of agreement among policymakers for adaptation priorities. They found that more urgent options also featured greater controversy, such as enacting water management regulations and building dams. Rodina and Chan [35] surveyed more than 400 water experts, finding >80% agreement as important or very important for seven different factors, ranging from restoring ecosystems to inclusive, fair, and equitable governance. These studies suggest that the solutions part has broad agreement among experts, but these studies did not tackle how to implement solutions beyond pointing to conflict as a likely barrier.

Other studies have narrowed the solution space a priori and then solicited experts’ perspectives to help identify options within a working theory about implementation. For example, Bakker et al. [36] looked at potential quick wins (which they define as low-cost, implementable in the short to medium term, and have high sustainable development benefits) within the transportation sector, such as biking and walking infrastructure. Similarly, a few studies asked experts to assess the feasibility of pre-selected options, evaluating the potential barriers that may prevent quick implementation [37,38]. Overall, existing research using experts constrains the solution space by determining beforehand what types of solutions or features are important or by using quantitative measures of agreement. In our work, we build upon this previous work by interviewing experts while adopting a broader, more open-ended focus to foster insights into which broad categories of solutions experts envision.

1.3. Current Research

In the current work, we employ expert elicitation to provide a qualitative analysis that compares views among climate experts in India (n = 30) and the United States (n = 33) on what priorities experts would recommend for mitigation and adaptation and how they envision the path toward implementation. Our goal in this study was to complement these existing studies to see whether U.S. and India experts’ insights from a national vantage point would reveal their thought process on how to implement the mitigation and adaptation solutions they see as necessary. Our selection of one country in the Global North and one in the Global South heightens the contrast between mitigation and adaptation circumstances faced by both countries. Additionally, both India and the United States have federalist governments where the involvement of national and subnational governments is critically important to policymaking and implementation. This similarity can help to illustrate how experts see the need to deal with coordination challenges at subnational levels, which are relevant for meeting international climate treaty goals. India and the United States face differences in the degree of political polarization around the role of national climate policy, systems of democratic governance, financial capacity, population density, and land availability to enact mitigation and adaptation solutions that can reveal important and distinct challenges in how to respond to the complexity of the climate challenge.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Collection

We used purposive and snowball sampling strategies to contact climate change experts based in India and the United States. We identified climate experts based on our team’s network to conduct initial outreach. A team of research assistants expanded on this initial list of potential participants through online research of climate experts based in the United States and India. Further experts were identified through snowball sampling by asking experts who participated in this study for additional climate experts we could consider contacting. We defined expertise as those employed as a professor or researcher at a university whose research addressed climate change as a topic or who worked extensively on climate change at a governmental or non-governmental organization (see

Table 1. Demographic data for climate experts participating in the interviews.

Country	India	U.S.
Number of Participants	30	33
Natural Scientists	5	17
Social Scientists	20	14
Interdisciplinary Scientists	5	2
Years of Experience (Mean)	18	23
Years of Experience (Range)	5–33	6–55
Age (Mean)	51	53
Age (Range)	34–88	29–78
Female	9	12
Male	21	21

). We aimed for a sample of 30 experts based in each country and achieved a sample of 33 U.S.-based experts and 30 India-based experts. We recruited experts through email and conducted semi-structured interviews face-to-face using videoconferencing. We did not compensate experts for their participation.

All interviews were conducted between 1 June and 31 July 2021 and were audio recorded with participants’ permission and then transcribed and coded using NVivo 12 software. Interviews lasted an average of 53 min, with the longest interview going 82 min and the shortest lasting 24 min. All interviews were conducted in English. The full interview protocol is provided in Supplemental Materials. This research was approved by Indiana University’s Internal Review Board; informed consent was received from all participants.

2.2. Semi-Structured Interview Protocol

We asked experts to identify what solutions they believe are needed for mitigation. Experts were then asked which of the solutions they listed should be prioritized to mitigate climate change and then to allocate 100 points to their solutions. Next, experts were asked to explain what pathways they would recommend for achieving their proposed solutions. Finally, experts were asked about the barriers to those solutions and pathways. This set of questions was then repeated for adaptation solutions, point allocations, pathways, and barriers. We defined mitigation for experts as reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases and defined adaptation as adjusting to the actual or expected future climate to reduce vulnerability to the effects of climate change. (We also asked experts about carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering specifically but did not address these responses in this manuscript. Few experts brought these topics up unprompted when discussing mitigation or adaptation).

2.3. Data Analysis

We used a grounded theory approach, which begins with an inductive exploration of the data that informs theoretical expectations [39]. Given the vastness of the solution space and difficulty in prioritizing that space (see Section 1), the grounded theory approach can be used to identify what solutions experts recommend, the pathways to achieving those solutions, and the barriers to be overcome. By not directing experts’ attention to carbon pricing or any other specific policies, we allow for a greater variety of responses and insights to emerge. This qualitative approach to analysis can help to illuminate experts’ underlying reasons and highlight factors that researchers may otherwise overlook by defining a set of solutions to address a priori. Our goal is to complement existing research, such as Kornek et al. [33], that undertook a large-N survey of climate experts.

A core qualitative approach to data analysis is to develop codes by recognizing and relating concepts in the data from more contextual to more general categories in a nested, hierarchical fashion [40]. Our team began by initially reading the entire set of transcripts, with team members proposing codes based on their individual analyses. As a team, we then discussed where those codes could be combined into similar concepts [41]. We developed a codebook with definitions for each code, instructions and examples on how to apply each code, and a nested hierarchy of secondary codes within a smaller set of primary codes (see Supplementary Materials for codebook). The codebook focused on identifying topical aspects that experts addressed to help us group similar concepts together. Every primary and secondary code was given a detailed definition that included examples to promote clarity and consistency in the coding. As coding proceeded, we merged or revised some codes to reflect changes in our team’s understanding or to reduce unnecessary complexity or redundancy [42,43].

We employed a team-based approach to coding the transcripts. Two coders would independently code responses to one question in the same transcript and then identify points of disagreement if one coder applied a code that the other coder did not. Coders would then go disagreement-by-disagreement to discuss each one until they reached an agreement on what code to apply. Coding pairs were changed from question to question to norm-shared approaches to applying the codes based on the codebook. If a coding pair disagreed, a third coder would be brought in for further discussion until an agreement was reached. In some cases, the third coder would cast a tie-breaking decision.

In the Results section, we reference the codes to provide some guidance on the overall number of topics that experts addressed. We organized the Results subsections based on how we asked the questions during the interviews by mitigation and adaptation and then focused on solutions prioritized by point allocations, pathways to implement those solutions, and barriers to implementation. For the solutions, we present the most common ideas based on point totals that the experts awarded. For pathways and barriers, we refer to the most common secondary codes to highlight common topics. However, because of the large variety and lack of generalizability, we do not use the code frequencies to organize the results. Instead, we highlight a diversity of ideas and reasons that were mentioned to illustrate the comprehensiveness of experts’ responses and the complexity of responding to climate change. In the Supplementary Materials, we include the total number of times individual experts addressed primary and secondary codes.

3. Results: Experts’ Perspectives on Mitigation and Adaptation

Climate experts for both the U.S. and India agreed on the types of responses that are needed overall. Across all mitigation and adaptation questions, experts’ responses fell within 10 primary codes. Eight of these themes were mentioned by more than 80% of experts: Economics, Energy, Innovation, Policy, Politics, Public Support, Natural Resources, and Risks. Two themes, Public Actions (41%) and Other Climate Solutions (33%), were mentioned far less frequently. Nested within these 10 primary codes, we identified 106 secondary codes. Overall, there were lots of similarities in the types of solutions and barriers that experts addressed. At the same time, there was a surprising amount of variety addressed in terms of details and perspectives within those areas, as well as differences in perspectives on how to accomplish mitigation and adaptation solutions. For example, responses to each question (solutions, pathways, and barriers) had a minimum of 59 secondary codes present. Between 4 and 13 secondary codes were addressed by at least one-quarter of the experts for each question, illustrating both the comprehensive view experts brought to the topics and a limited set of clear arguments on how best to respond to the similar issues experts identified. Next, we provide quotes to illustrate the diversity of perspectives for solutions, pathways, and barriers for mitigation, followed by the same structure for adaptation.

3.1. Mitigation Solutions

Renewable energy was the top mitigation solution (>30%) for both India and U.S. experts. Experts mentioned multiple types of renewable energy sources: solar, wind, nuclear, and clean hydrogen. Following renewable energy, experts coalesced around a complementary set of priorities that focused on either reducing existing emissions or expanding low-carbon options. These included energy efficiency (e.g., reducing how much energy buildings use), electrification (e.g., replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity), sector-based emissions (e.g., reducing the carbon-intensity of industrial processes), carbon pricing (e.g., policies that provide financial disincentives for GHG emissions), and transportation (e.g., improving access to public transit). The only notable difference was greater attention to carbon pricing by U.S. experts and greater attention to sector-based emissions by India experts. A smaller number of experts allocated points to batteries and storage and the electrical grid, which are also necessary complements to renewable energy (Figure 1).

Most experts (39) identified a top priority to which they allocated most of their points, while the remainder were split nearly equally among different solutions (13), or they declined to allocate any points (11) due to the complexity of responding to climate change or reluctance to make broad assertions. Top priorities were largely clustered around renewable energy or electrification. A few experts listed carbon pricing, clean energy standards, research and development, and carbon dioxide removal as their top choices, revealing some variety in thinking.

The focus on changing the energy supply was often pointed to because accomplishing that first would have a major impact on the subsequent opportunities for decarbonization. For example, one India expert noted, “The first thing that I would add the highest points would be allocated to the coal-to-clean [energy] transition. Essentially, if we reduce the emission intensity of the grid, that will help with all the subsequent things that are also electrified down the line” (IN276).

As with many of the responses throughout the elicitation, experts addressed a surprising variety of possible solutions. A full list is available in the Supplementary Materials. Some examples of the variety of solutions included distributed power, economic opportunities, sustainable agriculture, and individual and household actions, among numerous others.

Overall, experts tended to treat mitigation solutions as mostly technical issues, where many of the needed options were technologically feasible and, in some cases, already cost-competitive, such as solar energy. “I would say we could get to 80% emissions reduction through strategies that exist now: clean energy, enhancing the grid, improved interconnections, EVs, things like that. But getting that last 20% of emissions reduction basically requires technologies that don’t exist right now” (US127). The biggest question marks were ongoing research and development in batteries, storage, and areas where there were few existing low-carbon alternatives, such as for cement, steel, and aviation fuels.

3.2. Mitigation Pathways

Experts offered a range of philosophies on how to implement proposed solutions, with a majority addressing the importance of national policies. Government action was the most consistently mentioned secondary code (60%). Often, experts noted that national policy was essential given the scale of changes that were needed, the competitive pressures faced by businesses, or the lack of options available to consumers.

Carbon pricing was strongly favored by some experts, given its overarching impact on the private sector and consumer behavior. “The main thing I’m in favor of is pricing carbon emissions, and then letting the economy just figure out what technologies work the best or would be most effective” (US131). A key benefit of carbon pricing is its role as a coordinating mechanism. “We know from modeling studies, that it would take a tremendous amount of different regulations and regulatory approaches to achieve the same emissions reductions as a carbon price, and the carbon price does it at a lower economic cost” (US160).

Experts noted a variety of policy tools in addition to carbon pricing, as well as more generally referring to the usefulness of regulations to help with coordination challenges and the different needs that climate change is creating. For example, “The different localized grids [in the United States] are interconnected for reliability, but not to transmit huge amounts of electricity coming from wind and solar. … We really need a federal-level policy that will allow us to make [high transmission levels] happen” (US102).

Many experts were attentive to the idea that national policy was critical to provide an enabling environment for the private sector to make the transition to low-carbon options. “Governments have a very important role to play because most of the action is driven by them. [Local governments] have a role to play in terms of implementation, but the policy agenda definitely has to be driven from the top” (IN211). Another expert offered a similar view: “For many of these [solutions], without a real push from policy it is super hard to scale. And it is super hard to get past the fact that we are heavily subsidizing other [high-carbon] technologies right now” (US127). National policy could take the form of pushing companies to improve energy efficiency or driving down adoption costs to make low-carbon options competitive on costs for market incentives to amplify the transition away from the status quo.

Other experts felt that recognition of existing constraints should shape mitigation responses toward more readily available options. “I think for me it’s a combination of impact on climate, technical feasibility, and political feasibility where [there is] a lot of momentum” (US107). One expert prioritized energy efficiency because it “is the lowest hanging fruit that we should be counting on” (IN232). The urgency for changes that underpinned perspectives in favor of national policies was also present in arguments for taking more immediately feasible actions. As one expert noted:

“I think to be effective on the timescales we need, [changes] need to start with policy and to be effective politically. That needs to happen in the places where it can. There are some federal policies that are feasible in the near term and lots that aren’t. There are state policies that are likely to be feasible, some of which would have spillover effects into states that are not keen to implement climate policies. … The thing I really think should happen is a robust carbon price. At the federal level, I’m not going to hold my breath for that. Absent that, there are lots of policy tools that can be used: building codes, clean electricity standards, [and] tax incentives…” (US106)

Relatively few experts drew attention to individual or household behaviors as a starting point for change. In multiple instances, experts highlighted barriers that pointed toward government intervention as a necessary change to make other actions feasible. For low-income households, “you’ve got to really help them overcome that [cost] barrier. So that implies a role for either government or the private sector” (US111). At the same time, some, mostly U.S., experts saw the need for greater public support and engagement as an essential aspect of the policymaking process. One response framed inaction as costly: “it’s pretty clear that human lives are already at risk. … So that’s the challenge—to get lawmakers to care about this issue and to make them understand that just like in the COVID case, inaction has consequences, very serious consequences” (US132). Similarly, other experts focused on citizen pressure: “I really think it needs to start with people demanding that we start acting more quickly” (US181).

A few experts argued for casting a wide net with the goal of generating greater synergy rather than overreliance on one approach. “It’s really clear that the solutions need to start at a whole bunch of different levels [including government, the private sector, and individuals].” The expert then expressed the need for complementarities between these different levels while cautioning against “falling into the trap of thinking that any particular sector is going to be the one that delivers all the answers” (US130). A related concern was the need for and potential advantage of coordination across these levels: “I think that, for this, there needs to be close coordination between the [central government] and the local government authorities. … It’s not something that can be done by one entity alone. … It’s sub-national action that will help in accelerating the transition” (IN267).

3.3. Mitigation Barriers

Both India and U.S. experts addressed a variety of barriers, but most responses pointed to challenges with implementation based on (1) technical or (2) financial factors. For example, nearly one-half of the experts addressed adoption costs and technological feasibility. Technical barriers did not receive extensive comments beyond pointing to the need for ongoing research and development. More attention was directed to the need for finances and support for purchasing decisions for small and medium enterprises. A third set of barriers pertained to political tradeoffs and political inaction in slowing down the process for implementation.

Some comments on technical barriers emphasized the limits of current options, where the need is known but the solution is not yet available: “You would need [carbon dioxide removal] to reach carbon neutrality … you cannot go 100% renewable. That’s technologically impossible without storage. And we are not there for long term storage, with batteries” (US105). Other experts noted systemic barriers to lifestyle behavior change, noting that discouraging high-carbon lifestyle behaviors is unrealistic when such behaviors are effectively locked into place by broader societal and institutional choices: “It’s very easy for anyone to tell ‘don’t drive your car,’ but the problem is that if you don’t have public transportation, then you don’t have any other choice” (IN240).

Experts addressed financial barriers for businesses to adopt low-carbon practices from a number of perspectives. One line of concern was how to pay for the research to help manage the financial risks that private companies need to take to bring new technologies to market. “How do we accelerate green finance that can help in supporting even those solutions, which yet don’t have a demonstrated business model?” (IN276). The expert noted that low-carbon energy supply and infrastructure are reported to cost India USD 500–USD 600 billion. “Very little of this is going to be financed from government sources. So essentially, what kind of solutions and blended finance solutions can … attract greater private capital to help finance these sectors” (IN276). A related aspect was the challenge of moving from research and development to implementation: “There’s only so much that you can achieve in the lab. You need to start implementing these technologies at scale and those investments are very risky. You would need some sort of subsidy, either by government or by some large companies, [so that companies] can afford to be able to take on those risks” (US105).

A few experts pointed to the challenges with mobilizing private-sector financing to support the transition for small and medium enterprises. One India expert noted that bankers may not provide loans for new equipment that can reduce emissions because the loan officer may not understand how the equipment will aid the company’s profitability. “There is a lack of trust there to give the loan, even if the small and medium enterprise has a good balance sheet…. They still don’t get loans because the bank officers don’t understand the technical stuff” (IN249).

Another type of financial barrier focused on the adoption of new technologies. One dimension of this was presented as a fairly simple question of cost competitiveness. For example: “The first barrier always is the market barrier, that if the solution is not even competitive, there is no reason consumers, producers and industrial guys will adopt it. So, if hydrogen is very expensive, no reason we should assume that iron [and] steel companies will start adopting” (IN246). A second dimension pointed to the need for policies to consider the circumstances when important energy efficiency decisions are made.

[When] big purchasing behaviors are done, [it’s] because something breaks or because someone is moving. And they have a limited amount of time, so they don’t necessarily have a lot of time to invest in researching different options. … I think policies have not focused enough on their role in helping people understand the benefits of choosing the more efficient options (US102).

Purchasing decisions will affect business owners who may not prioritize the cost-saving potential of new equipment: “The factories still use coal-based furnaces. … We already have electric induction furnaces already out there in the market. [But] unless I see it, I will not adopt it. I’ll keep doing the same thing over and over again” (IN249).

Responses on political barriers included comments about political tradeoffs and the risk of inaction. “There will be winners and losers in this transition process. And it is expected the losers are going to be resisting hard. … Indian states that are dependent on fossil energy for revenues, fiscal revenues, they’re also losing in the game” (IN246). As an example, one expert pointed to potential job losses in India’s coal belt, where there are limited alternatives. “We don’t have any scientific basis to say this is the kind of impact going to happen in terms of their livelihood, in their job security, in terms of their real relocation. We really don’t know” (IN267). An India expert noted that the private sector’s response will be mixed because of the tradeoffs. “This pendulum swinging between the industries of the future and industries of the past is what the government will, knowing the way government operates, will kind of sit on the fence, and then industry is going to thrash it out amongst themselves and that will just have delays” (IN254).

One of the biggest differences between U.S. and India experts was the role of political polarization (addressed by 70% of U.S. experts and not mentioned by India experts), though experts from both countries expressed concerns about the consequences of inaction. Only a few responses touched on what could be done to move the political process along faster. One U.S. expert offered that “[climate change] in the U.S. is a very polarized issue. I think the thing that doesn’t work is sort of throwing facts at people, right. … I think it’s a matter of connecting to people’s values and showing them how these sorts of changes and the effects that flow for them will or do connect to their values” (US106). Another U.S. expert expressed concern about what would be needed to overcome inaction: “We’re going to have to let climate damages get really bad before people are willing to make really big sacrifices to address them. So I’m not optimistic about how quickly we will do this. And I’m not optimistic about avoiding significant climate damages” (US120). Political polarization was notable in the coding because it was mentioned by two-thirds of U.S. experts and not mentioned by any India experts. No other codes had such noticeable discrepancies.

3.4. Adaptation Solutions

Sustainable agriculture was the top priority among all experts and was also by far the leading priority for India experts. The solutions presented in the adaptation section focused unsurprisingly on the need to integrate climate change into planning processes and infrastructure investments. Both groups largely coalesced around the same set of adaptation solutions, including infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, strategic planning, and water management. Similar to mitigation solutions, there were many different solutions addressed by experts but no clear agreement on prioritization (Figure 2).

Agriculture featured prominently among India experts because of its importance to the Indian economy and its dependence on rain-fed irrigation: “Agriculture is going to be severely impacted by climate change... whether it’s excessive rains, or whether it is drought or … the [shifting] monsoons…. Climate-resilient agriculture should be a very strong focus” (IN249). Overall, roughly twice as many India experts addressed water management, crop protection, and fertilizer than U.S. Experts. On sustainable agriculture, U.S. experts offered similar views: “[A]daptation for agriculture is going to be important. Dealing with heat stress, dealing with water stress, dealing with more extreme weather. Right, as we saw a few years ago, it’s not just about heats and droughts. It’s also extreme rainfall and floods.” (US106). One of the suggestions by U.S. experts was for farmers to diversify the types of crops they are growing.

In addition to improving crop resilience, experts noted resilient infrastructure as a critical priority. “[T]hat once-in-100-year flood is happening every decade right now. … [W]e need to be thoughtful of all these changes in our infrastructure system and increase the resilience of our systems as we’re building new ones and making new investments” (US105). Another expert offered a similar view: “As we move forward, a lot of infrastructure still exists and it goes down with each event that hits us. So to ensure that reconstruction, rehabilitation of such infrastructure is easier, I think investing in resilient infrastructure is very, very important” (IN252).

Close to half of the experts (25) declined to offer priorities for adaptation, citing lower familiarity in this area than for mitigation. Roughly the same number of experts (27) had a top priority, while a small number of experts (11) identified multiple, equally important priorities. Points allocations covered 25 secondary codes for U.S. experts and 19 secondary codes for India experts. Top choices revealed a lot of variety in perspectives beyond sustainable agriculture and infrastructure, including economic opportunities, institutional capacity, natural climate solutions, risk assessment, and systems thinking.

Experts noted that adaptation solutions needed to account for contextual differences based on region, with some experts offering that they did not feel comfortable saying which community would be more important than another to deal with sea-level rise, forest fires, etc. As one expert noted:

I think what’s hard about [adaptation] is that which things should be a priority depends on who you’re valuing. And that’s a really difficult question, right? Adaptation touches on so many aspects of our lives. It’s hard to kind of say, in some universal way, which thing is more important, because one thing is more important to one community and one thing is more important to another community (US121).

In contrast, another view was that adaptation priorities should be based on vulnerability. “It’s easier to answer this question in the context of adaptation, because you can do it based on who’s the most vulnerable and who lacks the most adaptive capacity” (IN260).

3.5. Adaptation Pathways

Both India and U.S. experts depicted adaptation as having a larger role in local decision-making when compared to mitigation. Experts differed in the degree to which they felt adaptation depended largely on national policy or local actions. Many experts noted that both elements were essential and pointed to complementary functions between national and subnational roles. Government action was the highest priority for experts in both the U.S. (82%) and India (50%). The second highest priorities for U.S. experts were decentralization (36%) and budgeting and funding (36%), while for India, the second highest priority was strategic planning (27%). The differences between India and U.S. experts for government action represented the largest difference in percentages between the countries. Among less common responses, 20% of India experts addressed the need for better warning and forecasting to protect people, while U.S. experts did not mention it.

Funding, particularly for infrastructure costs, was emphasized as one reason that national policy would be essential. “I think it’s gonna have to be [national] government driven, because all of these things cost money” (US103). Infrastructure was noted as a priority because cities have not invested adequately in preparing for worsening natural hazards. “We have to think about infrastructure spending in alignment with the kind of risks that we are facing. … [In Kochi,] they don’t have an adequate drainage network in the city. They have never thought about it. They were hit by a once-in-100-year event and they were gone completely” (IN205).

Other experts pointed to the capacity at the national level as a critical aspect of how to implement solutions. “I think [developing improved weather forecasting] has to be at a national level” (IN232). Similarly, policy was seen as a tool to address issues where individual action would be less impactful. “Some [adaptation solutions] are clearly a matter of [national] policy across a wide range, right. So, individuals are, for the most part, not going to have much impact on wildfires” (US106). Similarly, policy could be necessary to help make adaptation financially viable for businesses. “While farmers can diversify by themselves, at some point, there has to be [national-level] legislation that follows to keep farmers in business quite frankly” (US103). Lastly, one expert felt that adaptation would be more challenging because there was not as clear of a role for the private sector to play as in the response for mitigation. There’s a very big role of government and public policy institutions in adaptation. … [the] market is not going to ensure that people adapt” (IN246).

In contrast, other experts emphasized the importance of local planning for adapting to changing risks. “You can have a national solar policy, but you cannot have a national adaptation policy. It will not fit. Right. So I think it has to start at the subnational level because they understand the ground realities” (IN252). Another expert offered a similar view: “These are all really complicated problems because they’re not centralized. They’re all distributed. And they relate very specifically to the geographic, economic, cultural context of each area” (US107). One expert offered a more specific recommendation on the need for local decision-makers to play an important role: “I’ve seen adaptation get initiated at the [national] planning commission level. It won’t work. I feel like adaptation is very, very linked to on-the-ground felt development. And institutional capacity building is what the national level needs to undertake at state and regional levels [to effectively adapt to climate change]” (IN260).

A third viewpoint emphasized the complementary roles between national policy and local decision-making. “It requires a national framework, but it’s particularly for adaptation because the impacts are so local. It requires the local authorities to be strengthened in terms of their capacities, technical knowledge, as well as resources to be able to implement these changes faster” (IN276). Similarly, “A lot of this has to happen at a local or state level, because the threats are going to vary and be sort of context specific. So they need localized level planning, but again, probably with financial support at a federal level” (US102). Risk assessments could also guide the process of reducing vulnerabilities:

“So this should start for disaster proofing based on costs, based on the risk assessment. We can’t do it on a national level because for each region the risks are different based on the local geography and also we need to work on local administration level, maybe a district level district administration. For monitoring and forecasting, [we] may need to work on a national level or South Asia level” (IN244).

3.6. Adaptation Barriers

Experts’ responses on the barriers to adaptation illustrated a variety of challenges. Of the more commonly mentioned barriers, experts pointed to the difficulties with (1) short-term thinking and status quo bias; (2) the enormous costs and slow decision-making processes involved; (3) the challenges of communicating with stakeholders, particularly at the local level of government; and (4) the difficulties of political partisanship and special interests. The most frequently addressed secondary codes included outreach and communication (35%), adoption costs (32%), and systems thinking (30%). Notable differences between the countries included that only India experts addressed institutional capacity barriers (17%), while U.S. experts mentioned public perceptions more often (42%) than India experts (3%).

Multiple experts pointed to the challenge of long-term thinking as a major barrier to adaptation. One expert pointed to the long time horizon, “gigantic, almost unimaginable capital costs” for coastal protection, extensive planning, “and a lot of communal agreement, which we’re not very good at these days” (US107). “The political class doesn’t look beyond the five-year time frame, perhaps. So there’s this lack of appreciation for something that could be 20 years away” (IN208). A similar concern was that local communities impacted by natural hazards may focus more on the costs of responding but less on the costs of preparation. “You get one hurricane, and people want to pay for that, but they don’t want to plan for future hurricanes, because they see it as a one-in-100 [years] kind of thing. And it’s not anymore. [We] are not necessarily thinking long term” (US135).

Policymaking institutions being tilted toward maintaining the status quo and ill-suited to address climate change represented one dimension of the lack of adaptation. “It is hard to revise policies. Much of our governance structure is very much designed for the climate … that existed in the decades past and moving towards the governance structure that is about nimble change requires a pretty fundamental paradigm shift” (US127). One expert described the lack of future planning bluntly: “There is still a lack of urgency. It’s not clear that enough people truly understand the mess we are in” (US137). How to convey a sense of urgency was mentioned as a major challenge as well: “Because this problem is very slow–things appear to be happening slowly. It’s very hard to convince people. How to bring that message to people, I don’t know” (IN240). Similarly, another expert observed that aversion to change could make overcoming the status quo very difficult. “A lot of times these kinds of local adaptation measures really require us to change our way of life [but] people sometimes want to stick with a status quo that is just no longer feasible” (US133).

One of the barriers identified as especially challenging was accelerating and scaling infrastructure development:

The biggest barrier is all of these solutions have to be done locally. … Just to do an environmental impact assessment and get stakeholder input and all of that takes us two years to do minimum, almost at any location. And the cost of that is typically comparable to the cost of, you know, I mean, it’d be in the millions of dollars range for any significant piece of infrastructure. So if you scale that across the whole country as to what we need, we are looking at hundreds of years and, you know, millions of dollars just to do assessments. … We have to find a way by which we can make that modeling process and the community input process much more streamlined” (US175).

Related to scaling adaptation solutions to encompass adequate sectors of the population, multiple experts noted cost as a major barrier. “The amount of funding that is needed for these projects is huge. And that funding has to come from the other investors and institutions, but they are not sure whether the money will come back. … It’s not market-based, [so] adaptation is not happening” (IN249).

Communication challenges were identified as a barrier because stakeholders may need a vision of success from scientists and other communicators to make decisions. For example, one expert was highly critical of the lack of usable information from climate scientists: “There is no effort to actually create information that is useful. … [Climate scientists] have shown no interest in actually making their science relevant to regular people or even to policymakers” (IN229). Another response focused on the need for a positive vision: “Show us what success looks like more. Like we spend a lot of time talking about risk, and loss, and the things, the challenges we’re up against. And communities very rarely get to see once a success story looks like” (US133). Similarly, another expert felt that “there’s big power and demonstration projects so that when one part of the country shows that they can do some kind of a win-win development project [that reduces risks and provides jobs] that generates a lot of support and interest in doing it elsewhere” (US107).

Political partisanship and special interest influences represented another set of related barriers to adaptation. “[H]yper partisanship is the biggest barrier we face” (US123). Entrenched interests and tradeoffs between different industries were also identified. “I don’t think one can separate that adaptation work from thinking about the nature of political economy, which helps who benefits what, whom it and whom it doesn’t. Right now, that’s a big challenge” (IN233). “There are people who have a real financial incentive in markets not accounting for climatic risks, right. And it’s people or investors or whoever, realtor associations, who don’t want people to think about climatic risks because that might decrease the demand for certain homes, right, which are at large climatic risk” (US160). One expert specifically noted that “the biggest barrier is a political economy [one]. There is a patronage system. There’s a patron-client network that goes all the way up” (IN229).

4. Discussion

4.1. While Experts Largely Agree on the Main Mitigation and Adaptation Solutions, Their Responses Indicate That “Muddling Through” Is the Current Approach to Implementation

Experts’ responses point to a challenging dilemma: national-level policies are a necessary means to develop and scale solutions for both mitigation and adaptation, but there remains substantial political opposition and inaction from various stakeholders who may lose from a decarbonized economy. The top solutions that experts prioritized focused on various dimensions of a decarbonized energy grid for mitigation and high-risk sectors and infrastructure for adaptation, which is similar to an agreement among IPCC experts surveyed by Kornek et al. [33]. Scholarship addressing this type of problem, where there is high uncertainty and there are strong political risks, has recommended that “muddling through” (i.e., engaging in a wide range of different, incremental solutions in tandem and iterating such solutions to determine which are most effective) can help to overcome potential paralysis, such as political gridlock [44,45,46].

Experts’ views on how to enact climate solutions tended to fall into one of three approaches: (1) national policy to prioritize either (a) the most economically efficient approach, such as carbon pricing, and/or (b) necessary research and development; (2) politically feasible actions to emphasize the quickest approach to reducing emissions; or (3) casting a wide net to promote multiple options that might generate unexpected synergies. On the side of pushing for national-scale policies, scientists and policymakers could continue to look for ways where there may be gains from muddling through on carbon pricing approaches. As the recent meta-analysis on carbon pricing schemes [26] found, there are decarbonization gains to be had despite a wide variety of approaches. Whether or not a national carbon tax is implemented, promoting a variety of pricing approaches could potentially lead to improvements, even if it may be haphazard in the short run. The problems of accountability, especially for approaches like carbon offsets, would not be easily overcome [47,48], but ongoing efforts to publicize those shortcomings could continue to push for greater emissions reductions and accountability to move a coalition of the willing in the right direction and helping to create market demand for low carbon options.

Conversely, while the technical feasibility of decarbonization is well-known for some sectors, such as electricity generation, for other sectors, experimentation through trial and error may be necessary. For sustainable agriculture, which was emphasized by experts in both countries, there is a need for experimentation to protect highly vulnerable farmers relying on rain-fed crops and highly capitalized farmers who need to diversify the crops they grow as part of decarbonization. Presently, there are no easy options for agriculture to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, the largest GHG from U.S. farms [49], and reforming safety net policies has proven difficult in many countries and will be needed given the increasing risks of extreme weather. For example, in 2023, farmers across multiple European countries engaged in widespread protests against the European Union’s decarbonization policies for agriculture [50]. Similarly, Indian farmers also protested and secured a repeal of three policy reforms that weakened farmers’ safety nets in 2021 [51]. Experimentation through on-farm trials could offer a way to coordinate national-scale needs and identify promising solutions without imposing costly policy risks upfront [52,53].

4.2. Experts Agreed That Catalysts Are Needed to Implement Climate Solutions, but There Is Little Agreement on What Catalysts Would Be Most Effective

Overall, the experts interviewed here did not offer extensive insights into increasing the political feasibility of climate action. On the one hand, most experts (especially U.S. experts) acknowledged that lack of political feasibility is a key barrier to implementing climate policy, but on the other hand, few offered concrete suggestions on how to overcome this barrier. Importantly, at the time our interviews were conducted (June–July 2021), there were few concrete examples of large-scale national-level policies passed in the United States. This changed in later 2021 and 2022, when the U.S. Congress passed several large funding bills that support low-carbon industries and infrastructure (perhaps most prominently, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act), arguably because advocates were able to successfully navigate conflicts that lead to oppositional coalitions, e.g., [28]. Future research should investigate what insights experts have learned from the recent success of these bills and how muddling through affects political resistance.

One of the few ideas for shaping political feasibility was the recommendation to provide a vision of what successful changes would look like. For example, some experts noted the importance of drawing on previous progress on environmental issues to provide a roadmap for future change. This is an area for future research, given the need for greater engagement at local levels of government. Research has shown that hope can be a powerful motivator. A meta-analysis found that those who felt hopeful about getting involved with taking action on climate change were much more willing to take action and support policy to address the issue [54]. In contrast, feeling hopeful about climate change more generally or society’s ability to address it (rather than hope about personally getting involved) was not as strongly associated with action or policy support. This finding is consistent with expert suggestions that mobilization efforts for various stakeholder groups might benefit from greater translation of scientific research into measurable goals and guidance on the implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures. At a practical level, demonstration projects could offer an existing way to build interest and knowledge.

To generate greater public support, another suggestion was to replace fact, heavy educational campaigns with greater attention to connecting people’s values to climate change actions, e.g., [55,56,57]. This recognizes the limitations of one-way knowledge transfer approaches that have been of ongoing interest for climate science communication, e.g., [58]. Taken together, these point toward a need for research and practice to explore how community-level engagement might change what is seen as politically feasible [59,60]. It also suggests an important link to framing mitigation and adaptation as national or local in scope. Given the importance of political support to national policy, connecting individual’s decision-making to climate could be a practical means to deal with the psychological distance of climate change [61], as well as offer a greater sense of agency for individuals to counterbalance potential dread risks associated with climate awareness [62]. These ideas could also be consistent with an experimental approach for sectors such as agriculture, where the mitigation and adaptation strategies are still being developed and where farmers could be central to constructing a vision of success.

4.3. Experts’ Attention to National-Level Factors Tended to Overshadow the Critical Need for Improving Individual and Local Decision-Making Capacity for Both Mitigation and Adaptation

There was a common, though not universal, depiction among experts in framing mitigation issues as national and adaptation issues as subnational or local. This was reflected most prominently in discussions about mitigation, where experts frequently addressed national policy as needing to play a central role in the energy transition because of the power to involve the private sector through incentives toward low-carbon options. Discussions of adaptation were more mixed: adaptation was depicted as subnational or local due to the different geographic risks, though many experts also pointed out that adaptation would require national government funding for infrastructure. Experts indicated that local contexts for adaptation make it more challenging to deal with given the wide variety of different stakeholders involved and that action needs to be tailored more specifically to local adaptation problems. Nalau et al. [63] similarly found perceptions that adaptation is framed as primarily local despite the potential for resource conflicts at the local level, such as water scarcity. Yet, the tendency for most experts to implicitly draw this distinction may also be somewhat constraining, as both mitigation and adaptation do have local, national, and global dimensions, such as local planning and national infrastructure funding (both for adaptation) or campaign and training to make homes more energy efficient and connecting the electrical grid across states to use more renewable energy (both for mitigation).

Experts focused less attention on their mitigation responses on how to deal with Public Actions, such as voting, household behavior, or purchasing decisions for small and medium enterprises. This limited attention is interesting given that the barriers experts identified for both mitigation and adaptation involve changing individuals’ beliefs to address political challenges or many local decision-makers for adaptation responses. Comments for mitigation tended to begin and end with price signals. While those are critical, the need for support to make those decisions—whether it is the lack of options, awareness, or financing—was mentioned as a barrier, which is supported by the literature [64]. More research to date has focused on what motivates individuals to act, e.g., [61,65], rather than helping to guide and simplify decisions for those individuals already willing to act. A potential pathway to implementation is necessary capacity-building for decision-making, such as through actionable science [66,67,68]. In adaptation, experts frequently noted this as local planning on where to site infrastructure. Taken more generally, the capacity to make effective decisions across society is a substantial issue that has not received much attention. Several India experts were very critical of the lack of action information coming from the scientific community. They were addressing weather and disaster forecasting for physical safety and infrastructure planning. At the same time, this notion could be extended to actionable information across a range of solutions that involve many decision-makers across sectors, behaviors, or geographies, including for mitigation.

A second mitigation–adaptation contrast that a few experts posed was the lack of involvement of the private sector in adaptation. The basic logic was that if national mitigation policies can provide the right financial incentives, then lots of the decision-making will be resolved through price signals. While the earlier example notes some potential limitations with this, it does clearly involve the private sector in providing consumers with more low-carbon goods and services. It is worth considering what roles the private sector can play in adaptation, which has not been studied extensively [69]. One logical option is the insurance industry, which has an existential stake in understanding climate risks accurately. More attention and research on whether information about insurance risks could help to drive consumer behavior in the direction of less risky purchasing would be valuable. Similarly, economic development strategies to grow, recruit, and retain small and medium enterprises might also help to signal adaptation planning priorities at subnational and local levels since many businesses will also need accurate information on the risks of climate change to their long-term viability [70].

4.4. Limitations

Our work is exploratory in nature and faces several limitations in interpreting our results. First, our sample is non-random and cannot be generalized to all climate experts. Both countries from which we recruited experts are democracies; future work should consider interviewing experts from nondemocratic countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Some experts also expressed concerns about their knowledge in particular areas, given our exploratory approach to both mitigation and adaptation at a national level. Our interviews, conducted in 2021, also captured responses prior to important pieces of climate legislation being enacted in the United States, notably the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Given the focus on politics and policy, these pieces of legislation would have likely influenced U.S. experts’ responses. For example, it is possible that U.S. experts’ assessment of political barriers and pathways might now be informed by the hurdles overcome in passing such legislation. We also encountered difficulty in identifying common definitions for the terms “solutions” or “pathways.” Carbon pricing, for example, could be described as a solution to climate change or alternatively to achieving decarbonization. Future theoretical work might consider building off these results and other work to develop a framework for the process by which climate change mitigation and adaptation would occur.

5. Conclusions

We compared responses from climate experts located in India and the United States to explore the similarities and differences among mitigation and adaptation priorities and barriers. The results of this study show many similarities in solutions and barriers for experts in both groups. Overall, responses indicated that experts largely agree that mitigation solutions are national in scope and require national-level policies for implementation and scaling. The core difficulty is that political obstacles prevent national policies from being effective. Additionally, the tremendous scope of needed solutions means there is a need to find ways to help prioritize and simplify how to proceed. Experts’ responses identified renewable energy as the top priority for mitigating climate change and sustainable agriculture as a top for adapting to the impacts of climate change.

Future research on how to respond to climate change should explore the implementation aspects of proposed solutions. Bringing solutions to scale involves both supply-side and demand-side dimensions. As several experts noted, purchasing and planning decisions involve many individuals for both mitigation and adaptation from a demand side. While experts’ responses indicate that our current approach to implementation is to muddle through, there is a lot of opportunity for research to explore and theorize how best to accomplish implementation. Based on experts’ perspectives in this study, future research could explore how best to engage individuals on climate action—such as financial incentives, value-based framings, or community-level responses, among others—and connect those approaches to increasing the potential for enacting and sustaining national policies.