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.

New Inauguration Climate Report Released

What Kind of Change? Obama's Climate Policy in 2009

To honour the fact that we now have a new and talented President of the United States of America, I co-authored a report on Obama’s 2009 climate policy strategy for Climatico.

I was very impressed by Obama’s Inauguration speech.  It marked a significant change from his campaign speeches when he would use his prowess in public speaking to whip the crowd into a frenzy.  This was a more measured and intelligent speech, addressing both the challenges ahead and the immense possibility for change that has emerged out of this hardship.

Some of my favourite lines in his speech addressed climate change in a way that no previous president has ever discussed the issue.

“Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.”

“Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter”

Finally a president that ‘gets it’ on energy and climate change.  Good luck to him!

Obama Picks His “Green Dream Team”

Yesterday, Obama announced his pick for Secretary of Energy.  He chose a Nobel laureate who is a keen supporter of alternative energy, and who has said that people saying that they are uncertain whether climate change is being caused by humans is “reminiscent of the dialogue in the 1950s and ’60s on tobacco.”

No, it was not Al Gore!

Obama’s green team (L-R): Carol Browner, Lisa Jackson, Nancy Sutley, and Steve Chu, with Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Obama picked the physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Stephen Chu - a decision that has won praise from scientists across theboard.  “His appointment should signal to all that my administration will value science,” the President-elect said in a press conference yesterday. “We will make decisions based on facts.”

“Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama’s bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment,”

commented Andrew Leonard of Salon.com.

Alongside Chu, Obama chose Carol Browner as his “Climate Tzarina” who will coordinate between the different government agencies that deal with energy policy.  He also picked chemical engineer and former environmental policy official Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates air quality. Nancy Sutley, a Californian environmental officer, becomes head of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality.

Gene Karpinski, the head of the League of Conservation Voters, sums up the response from environmentalists, calling Obama’s choices “a green dream team“.

Obama has frequently said that tackling climate change and creating energy independence were high on his list of priorities, and these announcements reinforce Obama’s claim that he will take significant action to on these issues early in his presidency.

London Climate March: Non-violent Direct Action

While there are many stories that could be told about the Global Day
of Climate Action, I would like to talk about the rising star of
climate campaigning: non-violent direct action, or NVDA.

Today campaigners in over 40 countries marched in a global effort to
increase government action on climate change. Climatico had
half-a-dozen analysts on the ground to report on the action.

After much walking, chanting, drumming, and shivering, our estimated
10,000-strong battalion of climate marchers rounded the corner into
Parliament Square. After a few speeches and some music, we were greeted
with two quotes:

“Direct action is the last resort of democracy”

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this
planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I
believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil
disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not
have carbon capture and sequestration.”

Any guesses as to who these were credited to?

Parliament Square by Dominic Rowland

Nope, not a bunch of eco-hippies, but Oscar Wilde and Al Gore (though I can’t find a source for the first).

Later, we heard from John McDonnell, the MP whose constituency
includes Heathrow Airport, who gave a rousing speech in which he
pledged to participate in NVDA if the government approved the plans to
build a third runway at Heathrow.

Finally, Caroline Lucas MEP, came up on stage, inviting us all to a “tea party” (read sit-in) at Heathrow Terminal One.

So we have high-profile politicians calling for NVDA, a situation which is unlkely to have happened without the game-changing court verdict
regarding the Greenpeace protesters at Kingsnorth. But will it work?
Well there certainly seem to be a lot of people that hope so!