This weekend marks a crucial turning point for climate change campaigning across the world. The People’s Climate March (expected to attract hundreds of thousands in New York, and smaller crowds in London and elsewhere) is the beginning of a journey that will end in Paris, December 2015, when UN negotiators have a chance to improve on the dismal outcomes of the now infamous Copenhagen talks five years ago.
When, inevitably, the Copenhagen deal didn’t live up to expectations, and the real decisions were deferred for another few years, many people were left feeling crestfallen.
Without a doubt, politicians (and the lobbying of vested interests) are primarily to blame for the fact that ‘Hopenhagen’ crashed and burned. But looking back, campaigners might wonder whether the level of hyperbole that coated the otherwise sensible demands of civil society was really the most effective way of gaining and keeping the public’s trust.
Over the next 15 months, campaigners face the formidable task of re-animating the shapeless spectre of climate change, coaxing it out of hiding and back into the public eye. There is another chance to build public support for a legally binding agreement between all of the world’s nations, to keep most of our remaining fossil fuels in the ground.
But we have to learn from our mistakes, and ask what could be done differently this time. Here are three important ideas for re-inspiring public support – in the hope that the road to Paris has a happier ending than the long bus journey to Copenhagen:
1. Strike the right balance between ‘brightsiding’ and apocalypse
Scaring someone is certainly likely to attract their attention, but with an issue as intangible, distant and all-encompassing as climate change, it is also likely to leave them feeling unable or unwilling to take steps to reduce the threat they feel. It is much easier – as we can all attest – to ignore it.
But the backlash against doom and gloom has gone too far. The trend towards ‘brightsiding’ (in effect, putting a positive spin on everything related to climate change) is no more helpful, and just as inaccurate. Not everything will be bigger and better in a climate-changed world.
The challenge is to find a balance that minimises the hand wringing but acknowledges the enormous, unprecedented challenges that climate change poses. There are many constructive solutions to these challenges, which will bring some gains but will surely also involve weathering some losses.
Being honest about these – and involving as many people as possible in a conversation about the implications for how future generations live – is the only approach that makes sense in the long term. We can’t be scared into caring, but we also can’t be soothed into accepting our fate. And when you put it like that, its clear that neither is a particularly democratic approach in any case.
2. Redouble efforts to engage across the political spectrum
Like the NHS, or any other major, ongoing intervention by governments for the public good, regulating the world’s carbon emissions can only happen with support from across the political spectrum. But a fiery and deepening polarisation has gripped the Australian and American political systems on climate change. A recent poll of Westminster politicians found that among Conservatives – and only among Conservatives – sceptical views are still rife.
Shouting at Conservatives that they are wrong, irrational, or misguided is not going to help. Climate change is still seen as toxic and left-wing to many on the centre-right. It is therefore incumbent on anyone who is serious about long-lasting political consensus on climate change to find ways of bringing moderate conservatives into the debate. A global agreement in Paris isn’t going to happen without them.
3. Nurture communities of conviction – this is not a problem to face as individuals
In his new book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, my colleague George Marshall argues that our inability to grasp and respond to the issue of climate change is fundamentally related to the lack of social infrastructure for sharing, validating and strengthening our beliefs about this challenge.
Climate change is a dealt with almost exclusively in private. With barely any public or political discourse against which to calibrate our own views, we can easily come to convince ourselves that hardly anyone shares our positive views about climate change solutions, when in fact a majority does.
Marshall argues that by looking to other communities (such as trades unions, or even faith groups) which provide support for their members, allowing their personal beliefs to be validated by their peers, lessons can be learned for campaigning on climate change.
Creating the space for a social consensus to be built – through physical or virtual communities of conviction – seems a better aim than trying to ‘nudge’ individuals into more environmentally virtuous behaviour, all the while ignoring the social nature of belief formation.
As the window of opportunity to prevent the most dangerous effects of climate change grows ever smaller, campaigners can honestly claim that we are rapidly running out of time to ‘save the world’. But if no-one believes them, or only an isolated segment of the population is prepared to take it seriously, then the impassioned rhetoric has all been in vain.
With a second chance to get a political agreement that could – just about – keep carbon emissions within manageable limits, now is the time for campaigners to adopt approaches that will build the deeper public support that is so desperately required.
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Adam Corner is the research director for the Climate Outreach & Information Network (COIN) and an honorary research fellow in the School of Psychology, Cardiff University.
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