Communicating the Climate Crisis

When it comes to getting action on the climate crisis I think no-one has been more successful than Extinction Rebellion.  I remember at a party one time showing the NASA CO2 graph to a lady who didn't believe it could be real.  "If this were true people would be running around in the streets screaming" she told me.  That's why XR's tactics actually work.  You can hear day in day out about the urgency and severity of the crisis, but while people are carrying on as before it's difficult for the information to break out from the intellectual part of your brain, and occupy the bit that can actually make a difference.

I don't have an issue with XR's tactics, but I do worry about how we often talk to the public when we do have their ear.

The pie chart above is completely made up, but I think it's about right. A tiny proportion of the general public make up their minds by looking up facts and figures; a slightly larger - but still tiny - number are motivated by the suffering of animals and the extinction of (other) species; and a similarly small percentage actually care about people other than their immediate friends and family.  The problem is that XR messaging is mostly directed towards these groups who have already been won over and ignores the vast majority: those who really just worry that Tescos will run out of bog roll.

To be fair, the national organisation seems to be a lot better, but individual XR activists in the street are a little are a bit too keen to start talking about the Global South "who did least to cause the problem and will suffer the most".  This might be true, but the effect on the majority of the public on hearing this is more likely to be "phew" than "OMG, that's so unfair - I must picket parliament".  I have even read on my local XR website that climate change will affect Trans people more than other groups.  I have no idea whether or not this is true, but I'm pretty sure it's not the argument that will most reach out to the part of the public we have not yet convinced.  Other activists (and I'm probably guilty of this myself) are too keen to reach for the facts and figures.  Whilst it's important to get the truth out there, and a bare minimum that has not been communicated by the government or the media needs to be told, banging on about the science causes most people to glaze over.  As for the nature lovers, they're  definitely already onside.  We need to reach out to people like the one who cycled past the "Rebel for Justice" site in Cambridge shouting "Death to Polar Bears".  (I did enjoy that heckle though!)

We've seen the panic that ensues when Tescos runs out of bog roll.  That should be our focus, because unlike with the Coronavirus pandemic the stocks on the supermarket shelves won't bounce back a few weeks or months after we've triggered a climate tipping point.  Civilisation - which is needed for everything from tea to toilet paper - turns out to be a much more fragile thing than we had thought.  And the greatest risk to it is a global failure in harvests triggered by climate change, not bleeding heart lefty liberals.  Only when the public understands this will it be prepared to accept the sort of curbs on freedoms that it is so far happy to accept in the fight against Covid-19.