Niel Bowerman’s Degrees of Change Blog » Do we need to talk about ‘climate change’ more or less?

Do we need to talk about ‘climate change’ more or less?

Does our communications strategy need to talk about 'climate change' more or less?

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, has written an inspiring call to arms over at TomDispatch.com. He argues that we need to build a much more active movement, and also that we need to change our communications strategy. It is this latter point that I want to discuss here, as it is so fundamental to our long-term strategy. Bill McKibben wants us to start talking more about climate change, instead of avoiding the issue.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else — energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that “green jobs” polled better than “cutting carbon.”

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone — beginning with the president — to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

In the circles that I move in, people seem to be heading the opposite direction. After Copenhagen and Climate-gate, campaigners started talking about climate change less, not more. We have The Great Power Race, the Energy Action Coalition, and the 10:10 campaign, which are all great projects, but aren’t built around the concept of talking about climate change.

I think that people have been focusing on changing strategy since Copenhagen, and so for groups that I’m involved in like the UK Youth Climate Coalition and the International Youth Climate Movement who have been talking climate change for a while, this means moving away from ‘climate change’ and towards ‘clean energy futures’. Is this the right direction to be moving, or should the UKYCC be holding its ground and sticking with climate-related messaging? Could it even be argued that we youth groups are switching to a tried-and-failed tactic that was used before our time?

It’s clear that we need a movement, and that will have to be made up of groups that talk about climate change, and groups that don’t. It must be made up of groups campaigning for high-speed rail, against road and airport expansion, for energy security, against wars for oil, as well as for cutting carbon emissions and against climate change. We need to make better links with diverse groups and ask not what these groups can do for the climate movement, but rather that the climate movement can do for them. To do this we don’t need to stop talking about climate change, if anything we need to talk about it more and show how it relates to all of these other issues.

Let’s keep climate change as a common theme through all of our messaging, and make a better effort to reach out to diverse groups and help them out with their campaigns.

Tags: Climate Change, Communications, Diversity, EAC, Great Power Race, IYCM, Movement Building, UKYCC

Climate Change, Communications, UKYCC, Uncategorized | Niel Bowerman | 11 August 2010 17:02

9 Comments

By Niel Bowerman, 11 August 2010 @ 17:51

Had another thought. Do you think issue fatigue could be enough of a reason to necessitate the change in strategy away from climate in the UK at least? Personally I don’t, but it’s worth considering…
By Guppi, 11 August 2010 @ 18:50

Nice timing Niel - I’m going to try and respond quickly before sitting down to my own communications nightmare.

I was really encouraged when I read Bills blog - because it reminded me of a talk I went to by a famous (in the global health world)HIV expert called Dr Elisabeth Persani, she’s an author, journalist and wonderful communicator, and even so,she has recognised the same problem in the HIV/AIDS movemente. Through its hayday the HIV movement began get comms savvy with the way it spoke about the issue: soon we saw major NGO’s and pressure groups communicating HIV in as many ways as they could : HIV is a gender issue, HIV impedes development, HIV requires access to essential medicines, HIV is a driver of poverty - and lo and behold - HIV worsened by climate change! She pointed out that we as public health experts had stopped communicating what HIV actually was - a virus which spreads through contact between two peoples bodily fluids. So by breaking down the issue of HIV and bypssing its fundamental elements we had actually weakened/diluted what it is that we were trying to say: HIV sucks, HIV can be prevented, Let’s prevent the spread of HIV.

I wonder if the same can be predicted for the climate movement? Tackling climate change reduces extreme weather hazards, gives us energy independence, brighter futures, healthier living,happier children etc etc

I’m all for clever idioms - but I also don’t want to trivialise the issue. I’d actually welcome returning to the tough talk of climate change - it makes the conversation more difficult, but it’s the right discussion to have.

Plus I think people already in this movement who are committed to creating change know its a hard sell, and we can’t be fooled into thinking there are quick fixes to getting round that.

Maybe we need to come back to that fact that climate change is caused by increased CO2 emissions and we need to massively reduce them. Yes we need answers and yes we need to inspire people through positive action - but we can’t shy away from what we’re ultimately discussing, after all, isn’t that what unites us?
By Pete, 11 August 2010 @ 20:31

maybe talk less about climate change and more about shared values.
“saving the planet” by enthusing people to save money by increasing insulation, changing light bulbs, may actually be counterproductive as it encourages self enhancing, materialistic values.
Collectively we decide what values we live by.
Humanity needs to see itself as part of the planet and not in someway separate and that we share caring values rather than selfish ones.
That way care for the World around us become a priority value and climate change will naturally surface as the critical issue.
By Casper ter Kuile, 11 August 2010 @ 23:17

A couple of points;

- There isn’t a right way or a wrong way to talk about climate change - it totally depends on the audience.

- Can we bypass climate change altogether by talking about things which have a daily relevance (and also an impact on the climate), like food? I think this is a really exciting avenue - and linking the impact of our relationship with food to health, body image, community, family, animal rights, workers rights, food production, self-sufficiency etc.

- I think we’ll be able to talk about the ins and outs of carbon etc, and the enormity of the problem, once we start properly talking about the enormity of the solution. I haven’t found many people doing that yet.
By Dave Hampton, 12 August 2010 @ 07:05

Great blog Niel, timely and spot on.

David Wasdell talks about progression from denial, through despair, to *doing*.

And i think most of us spend a bit of time in each of these three places?

Denial isn’t exclusively the province of Monckton and co. We all go there, time to time. We have to, to cope, to give us a break!

And a bit of Despair, given the reality we face, isn’t really so inappropriate either?

The fun bit, the real bit, the tangible sexy physical bit, the ‘be here now’ bit, is the Doing. The Be the Change bit. The Cut The Carbon Crap bit. This is where the ripples of the carbon we cut can run deep. Just Do (b)it.

It’s obvious and it’s an old idea, but there can be tremendous (almost infinite) power in a ‘futile gesture’. (e.g. The Starfish on the beach rescue story.)

Every time we demonstrate, in our own life, without fuss or ceremony, that we take the subject of avoiding this carbon stuff deadly seriously, we send out truth ripples.

And sadly of course, every time we don’t, we send out the opposite signal, undoing all our good work.

One of my hopes is that we can soon bring to an end the era of ‘flying to climate conferences’ :o)

There are some people on this planet whose message is so compelling, and whose physical bodily presence so inspirational, that I would fight for their right to keep on flying. e.g. Gandhi, Mandela, Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Anita Roddick, Bill McKibben, Satish Kumar, … the list is long.

And me, I am *not* on it! So I chose not to fly (and haven’t flown long haul since 1981.)

Don’t be disturbed by your reaction to this :o) I am *not* saying it’s ‘wrong’ to fly - far from it. But I am saying that if one’s words are ‘extreme’ then one’s actions need to be congruent for any authenticity and integrity?

Once we’ve cleaned up a little at home, then we can clear the air and talk down and dirty about the heart of the matter: the carbon story. And our part in it.
By Dave Hampton, 12 August 2010 @ 07:08

Oops. I was so impressed by how succinct you were Niel. I will learn from you!

But there was a P.S.

I meant to paste in this ‘Gramsci Beat’ update courtesy Rupert Read:

Gramsci updated: ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, realism of the intervention’. We need to ACT,realistically, pragmatically
By Rupert Read, 12 August 2010 @ 10:29

Dave is right. (I have a piece coming out soon in THE PHILOSOPHERS MAGAZINE) which explores the ethical dilemma of being invited to fly… to an environmental philosophy conference…)
Check out my greenwordsworkshop.org site for some ideas in progress about how to frame manmade climate change. See for instance George Marshall’s important thoughts on this, which partly echo Casper’s useful comments, above.
See also this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02enviro.html?_r=1 The first couple of paras are v useful.
By Daniel Vockins, 12 August 2010 @ 14:35

For me, it’s the form of our organising that’s just as big an issue as the framing. We resort increasingly to one-click activism but how effective is it and what forms of activism does it crowd out?

For me, we need to look more to how we won fundamental battles like those to form the NHS or bring into being the welfare state than we do to post 60’s campaigns that have been more focused on individual or part issues.

Would love to write more but have got to rush! See below article for some interesting thoughts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism
By Destrey, 7 May 2011 @ 13:52

Thanks for srhanig. Always good to find a real expert.