20110210_R4

Source: BBC Radio 4

URL: N/A

Date: 10/02/2011

Event: Jolyon Jenkins presents In Denial - Climate Change on the Couch

People:

• Crompton, Tom: Change Strategist, WWF
• Harvey, Emily: Community facilitator, Going Carbon Neutral Stirling (GCNS)
• Jenkins, Jolyon: BBC producer
• Macdonald, Louise: Chief Executive of the charity Young Scot
• Marshall, George: Founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN)
• Nunn, Rachel: Founder and manager of Going Carbon Neutral Stirling (GCNS)
• Townsend, Solitaire: Co-founder and Chief Executive of Futerra Sustainability Communications
  • Westen, Professor Drew: Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia
  • Weston, Jules: Project Manager, WWF

Presenter: But now on BBC Radio 4, In Denial - Climate on the Couch. Jolyon Jenkins asks why, if climate change is as big a problem as the scientists say it is, do so few people seem worried enough to do anything about it?

George Marshall: I have a little experiment, but I realise talking about my experiment probably dooms it to failure now, because no-one's ever going to answer the question, but what I tend to do when I meet people who work professionally on climate change - it might be scientists, it might be environmentalists - I ask them where they go for their holidays. It's very surprising how many people who work on climate change, recommending drastic emissions reductions, take long-haul flights for their holidays. So it seems like what they're doing is that they're setting up a personal moral offset. I do good work, therefore I feel I'm already doing my stuff on climate change, so I don't need to worry about it too much. And really this is just a microcosm of what is happening right across society, whereby people are finding a very wide range of cleverly constructed arguments in order to justify not changing.

Jolyon Jenkins: George Marshall is the founder of a charity, the Climate Outreach Information Network. In his view, something strange is happening to the climate - the climate of opinion. On the one hand, scientists are forecasting terrible changes to the planet and to us. On the other, most of us don't seem that bothered, even though the government keeps on telling us that we ought to be.

Male voice ("Bedtime Stories" commercial): There was once a land where the weather was very very strange. There were awful heat waves in some parts, and in others terrible storms and floods. Scientists said it was being caused by too much CO2, which...

Jolyon Jenkins: So why the gap between what the science says and what we do and feel? George Marshall again.

George Marshall: There's a sociological term called the "norms of attention". We seek to manage climate change by excluding it from the norms of attention. That's to say that we know it's happening if we're asked about it, but we never get round to talking about it. And indeed if you try and bring this topic up with people who are not actively involved in the issue, it's seen as being a complete downer on any conversation. People feel personally challenged, even within my own family - if I talk about climate change, people start rolling their eyes and saying "Oh, there he goes again".

Jolyon Jenkins: This programme isn't about climate science, so it's going to assume that the scientific consensus is right, for example the recent Met Office study which estimated that global temperatures could rise by about four degrees by 2070, if CO2 emissions continue at current rates. Four degrees, however you slice it, is not good, and for some people it will be very bad indeed. But does this undeniably bad news actually motivate people? Solitaire Townsend of the communications agency Futerra thinks not.

Solitaire Townsend: When you think about climate change, when you sum up the images of climate change in your head, it looks a lot like Hell. You've got rising seas, you've got scorched earth, you've got hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to flee from terrible weather events. It doesn't look like a particularly nice place to live, and it's not. Fear and guilt have never been a particularly compelling package to sell behaviour change.

Jolyon Jenkins: And when people are scared, they don't always behave in what you might think is a rational way. After 9/11, the reaction of New Yorkers was to go shopping, to make themselves feel better. The effect has been replicated by social psychologists in the laboratory. Tom Crompton of the WWF has studied the research.

Tom Crompton: The evidence is that when people are reminded that they will themselves one day die, they tend to work to try to reassert their dominant sense of identity, whatever that may be. And if their dominant sense of identity is one which is established through driving around in an expensive and inefficient car, then a reminder of their mortality, or an attempt to induce some sense of fear is likely to lead them to reassert their identity through those dominant aspects of who they see themselves as being.

Jolyon Jenkins: So it's completely counterproductive.

Tom Crompton: Well, it would be counterproductive for a large number of people.

Jolyon Jenkins: In fact, there's a growing consensus in policy circles that virtually every strategy that's been used to try to motivate people about climate change has been counterproductive. It starts with images, says George Marshall. Central government advertising often fits a template. First, the doom...

[Ominous sound effects.]

Woman's voice: Scientists say rising CO2 emissions are trapping heat and warming up the Earth.

Jolyon Jenkins: ...then offer a simple and fairly painless solution...

Woman's voice: In the UK, car travel is the single biggest contributor to our personal CO2 emissions. But together we can begin to make a difference. By driving five miles less a week. Another way to act on CO2.

George Marshall: This is the greatest problem humanity that has ever faced. When we try and communicate that to people, they become, ironically, less receptive to the message, because they suspect that it has been exaggerated or distorted, in the interests of the person who is communicating it. So you're torn, as a communicator, between - do you tell people the whole truth, and then have the risk that they put up the barriers and say no, they're not going to listen to this, or do you go for the message that you think people might listen to, which in some ways could be reducing the reality of it to a point where it seems so small and manageable that it's almost not worth dealing with? The ultimate extreme of this is these kinds of campaigns that say "Climate change is a huge global problem, so switch off your lights." The danger is, by going for everything that they think people might listen to, they've so severely undermined and devalued the core message of what they're trying to get over, that people do neither. They neither accept that climate change is a huge problem, nor do they turn out their lights.

Jolyon Jenkins: So can people be motivated to act? I went to Stirling, to see a project which is giving it a good shot.

Emily Harvey (talking to a group): My name's Emily and I work for Going Carbon Neutral Stirling. And really, what we're all about is trying to get people to reduce their carbon footprint. Is everyone comfortable with talking about carbon and climate change? Do you want me to...

Jolyon Jenkins: On a cold winter's night, Emily Harvey is talking to a community group in the village of Doune. The project she works for - Going Carbon Neutral Stirling - has set itself the ambitious challenge of talking face to face with 35,000 people in the Stirling area. The idea is to try to make cutting your carbon into a social norm, rather than something that only dedicated eco-warriors bother with. The project workers try to tap into existing social networks.

Emily Harvey: What I would normally do is cold-call a group and try and sell them, on the phone, for allowing me to come along and engage with their group. For some groups, that might be a sort of sit-down kind of thing where they sit round a table and do something, like a knitting group or whatever, and for other groups it might be standing on the side of a rugby pitch.

Jolyon Jenkins: When you say "I work for Going Carbon Neutral Stirling. I'd like to come and talk to you about reducing your carbon footprint..."

Emily Harvey: ...carbon footprint...

Jolyon Jenkins: ...is that what you say?

Emily Harvey: ...pretty much...

Jolyon Jenkins: ...and they say "We're a knitting circle." What do you say to that?

Emily Harvey: I would say that actually we've got some rugby teams, we've got a badminton club, we've got an art club, we ultimately want to talk to everybody, and really I wouldn't want you to feel left out.

[They laugh.]

Jolyon Jenkins: Do they say "You know, we don't actually mind being left out. Feel free to carry on without us"?

Emily Harvey: Yes, sometimes you have to, sort of, push it a little bit to try and get through the door.

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): ...the average Scottish footprint per person per year is around 12.7 tons of carbon. Compare that to Sweden, they're about 5.8 tons per person per year. An Ethiopian person's footprint is 0.08 tons per year. So we have quite a considerable amount of work to do.

Jolyon Jenkins: Emily and her boss Rachel Nunn, who is also at the meeting, want to sign up the community group to a Carbon Cutter Plan.

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): So it might be things to do with how you travel. It might be also be things to do with how you heat your homes. What kinds of foods you eat, as well, that comes up quite a lot.

Man 1: I think it's down to cost, I think, for lots of people.

Man 2: I would agree with that, I would think that the first incentive - there's got to be an incentive to do this, rather than just, you know, the carbon reduction thing.

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): There can be things that don't cost anything, there can be things that cost money. There can be things that feel a bit more painful. So like, as a group, you might decide to have a meat-free meal one day.

Man: It's very difficult to advocate - how do you address the question of U.S. - they don't even seem to care. And the question you would say is: well, why should we care?

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): In terms of the U.S., their carbon footprint is double ours. My personal opinion, I guess, is that if somebody doesn't start to set an example somewhere, then you end up with this vicious circle, when nobody's going to do anything, because they're waiting for somebody else to do something. And we have this with our team. We're the only organisation I know of, full-stop, that says our personal lives have to be low-carbon, so none of us fly, because we have to be, within ourselves, the people who set the example. [With?] this group you start to see how it is. Then other people look at it and then join in with what you're doing.

Man: I think the idea's great - I think what my concern would be about the enthusiasm and excitement, how to excite people to do it.

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): It's amazing. The Cornton Women's Over-50s Group got excited. We didn't put this in, but they got excited. Because they discovered they could cook these dumplings in the microwave in 11 minutes, when it normally took 3 hours, and for many people in Cornton that's quite a big deal to have the oven switched on for 3 hours, and to have it done, and so we could never have dreamt that up. Not even us, then, could we?

Jolyon Jenkins: After about 40 minutes of discussion, Emily seems ready to close the deal.

Emily Harvey (talking to the group): So it's pretty much a yes to a... trial plan, maybe?

Man 1: Aye.

Man 2: Yes, I would agree with that, that we tackle it for a trial period, perhaps 3 months, you know. And then, you know, see how it's working, and then take it from there...

Jolyon Jenkins: Afterwards, I spoke to the founder of Going Carbon Neutral Stirling, Rachel Nunn, whose background is in marketing. And I asked her why they put so little emphasis on the scary side of climate change.

Rachel Nunn: When I started putting the project together in order to get the funding, I had to actually explain that climate change was an issue to funders, so I would talk about what happens globally, potentially, at each degree of warming. And it was really great for getting funding, but actually it wasn't a particularly good activity to do with people to get them to do voluntary carbon reduction, because, we understand from the media that there's climate change fatigue, so we don't want to talk about something that will bore people, but more importantly, we've watched in our team, and when peope talk about tipping points, you know, that it's such a big challenge, and nobody's doing anything, and... what we find is that the energy level drops. And then people feel that they can't do anything, and they don't engage, and they get a little bit more frustrated and a little bit more angry. Whereas if we talk about carbon reduction in a completely practical - this is what we're doing, it's completely normal, it makes sense, then people are engaged with the interesting things that we can do, but it's very important, and this can't be understated. We can get people very interested in doing action - for people to do meaningful action, really cut carbon, there are other players that have to get acting, and those are employers, and those are local authorities. The media starts to need to help too, by giving this issue - carbon reduction community action - more space, so that it's seen as a social norm.

Jolyon Jenkins: The temptation that governments and campaigners are always falling into, is to suggest that by cutting carbon you can save money. You can do yourself a bit of good, as well as the planet. But according to Tom Crompton, that may be bad psychology. Because if you motivate people for the, in quotes, "wrong" reasons, it may stop them going any further.

Tom Crompton: If a person switches to compact fluorescent light bulbs, energy-saving light bulbs, on the basis that they'll save money, then there's some evidence that they're likely to see themselves as the type of person who adopts behaviours in order to save money. Of course then, presented with the choice between, I don't know, taking the plane to Edinburgh or taking the train to Edinburgh, they're perhaps slightly more likely to opt for the cheaper, but environmentally less friendly option of taking the plane. The question that interests me is: how is it that environmental communicators and campaigners at the moment are trying to encourage, motivate behavioral changes? And are they, actually, inadvertently at times shooting themselves in the foot through appeal to a set of values, which actually in the longer term are going to be entirely antagonistic to the emergence of the wider and more systemic environmental concern that we need?

Jolyon Jenkins: A lot of people in the green world hold the view that if you try to get people to adopt more climate-friendly behaviour by appealing to individualistic and materialistic values, such as saving money, then you're doomed. What's needed is an appeal to communal values and need to be made less materialistic, more eco-conscious.

[New Age flute music.]

Jolyon Jenkins: One project, thinking along these lines, is called Natural Change, run by WWF Scotland. It takes small groups of people, opinion formers, off to the wilderness of Knoydart on the west coast of Scotland. It's the brainchild of Jules Weston, a former television producer.

Jules Weston: Based on eco-psychology, which is a mixture of ecology and psychology, the Natural Change Project takes people in a programme of group-based activities, that look at personal development and social change. This is all set in a wilderness setting. And what it imbues is a much deeper connection with the natural world.

Jolyon Jenkins: So are you working on the assumption that people are actually blind to what they really care about, that they're sort of seduced by consumer society but underneath they have something deeper, which you can reconnect them with?

Jules Weston: I think that's true of all of us. You know, we do live in a Western consumer society, most of us, and it is quite easy to be disconnected from our deeper values. And also very very disconnected from nature. So by taking people into wilderness settings and running this series of workshops that have been based on therapeutic approaches, we can re-ignite that connection with nature and to our deeper values.

Jolyon Jenkins: One of the participants on the first course was Louise Macdonald, chief executive of the charity Young Scot.

Louise Macdonald: I think when I was, kind of, first considering it, a lot of the idea of environment and outside was really felt quite alien to me [sic]. I was a kind of self-confessed city type. My vision of the great outdoors was the space between the taxi cab and the front door of the shopping centre.

Jolyon Jenkins: And was there a moment, or was there an experience which, kind of, caused a big shift for you? Was there some kind of personal epiphany, when something happened?

Louise Macdonald: I suppose yes, there was. I mean, one of the activities that we took part in was spending a long time outside, from dawn till dusk, just actually being outside, on our own, and really just take my time to reflect, was just incredibly powerful. I'd been sat out for a long time. I'd been sat out for a long time in the rain, and really just kind of looking around and thinking about that, kind of, connectedness, and thinking about how everything is really, kind of, linked together, and everything's, kind of, dependent on each, kind of, part. I was, kind of, sitting under a tree, and just, kind of, look at it and thought: I'm only breathing because of that tree. And just that understanding, I think, was incredibly powerful.

Jolyon Jenkins: Well, you could say that what it proves is that if you take people out of their normal environment, you can subject them to a degree of brainwashing, and that's effectively what happened to you. You had some eco-brainwashing.

Louise Macdonald: Isn't that what all advertising is, though?

Jolyon Jenkins: Well, this is the criticism that's made of the green movement, that they don't just want to save the planet, they want to save the human race through re-engineering its psyche, and that they're not happy with human nature as it is, they want a different kind of human.

Louise Macdonald (laughs): What I find very interesting about all of this, I mean, I find the [inaudible], we seem to be unable to have, kind of, conversations around this in this country, without it being polarised. You know, you've got, kind of, green hippy camp on one side, and the, kind of, consumers on the other. I think that's actually incredibly sad, and potentially is contributing to the issue, rather than actually helping to solve it.

Jolyon Jenkins: Natural Change really does raise more questions than it answers, though. The people who have been on it may have had their consciousness altered, but have they changed their behaviour in meaningful ways? We don't know, and the project doesn't try to measure it. And assuming that you can't send the whole population off to the wilderness, is it enough to send opinion formers, and hope that the green epiphanies they have can be transmitted to everyone else? It seems a bit unlikely that everyone can be turned into a green in the time available. But maybe that's part of the problem, that climate change has been framed as a green issue from the start. George Marshall, of the Climate Change Outreach Network, thinks so.

George Marshall: The best example of this is polar bears.

[Music: The Lancashire Hotpots: Don't make the Polar Bears Cry.]

Lancashire Hotpots (singing):

Wow, before you go out and buy a car,

Or fly out to Dubai,

You ought to think about your carbon footprints,

Don't make the polar bears cry.

George Marshall: Polar bears scream "environmentalist". Well, if you don't think you're an environmentalist, you tend to push this to one side and say: this isn't an issue that concerns me.

Lancashire Hotpots: Lancashire! Let's do our bit to combat [?] climate change. Think smarter about the way you travel! Not only can you save the environment, you can save a few bob too! Save Lancashire! Save the planet!

George Marshall: Also, even more than that, polar bears speak to a natural tendency for us to distance ourselves from climate change by saying: it's a long way off, it doesn't relate to me. By taking as an image of something which is a long way away and has no bearing whatsoever on people's lives, we're almost saying: this is a problem you don't need to worry about too much, because it's a global problem, not a local problem.

Lancashire Hotpots (singing):

... kiss your car goodbye,

Take your kids to school,

Your bike to work,

Don't make the polar bears cry.

George Marshall: Framing is key to climate change. And the way that climate change has been framed, particularly in America, has in many ways been positively dangerous. In America, climate change has become strongly associated with the liberal progressive left. Which is fine for people who identify with that, politically, but it's a real problem in terms of getting broad-based support for action on climate change. Now this process has been very actively encouraged by right-wing think tanks that wish to label it as such, but I have to say people in the environmental movement have played a part in this, as well. They've quite unwittingly exaggerated its connection with their own interests. In many ways, it was a communications disaster to have the key public spokesman - came to be a Democrat. And not just a Democrat, but a former Democrat Vice President - Al Gore.

Jolyon Jenkins: So is there any way of getting ordinary Americans to worry, or care or act? Drew Westen is a psychology professor and political consultant, who's researched what messages resonate with the American brain, and which ones don't.

Drew Westen: First of all, using the term "global warming" itself is a non-starter. If you do online dial tests where a thousand people, for example, will be online and they'll be hearing messages that are about 45 seconds to a minute, describing the problem and what we need to do about it. And they're moving a slider on their computer, where they'll move it one direction if they like what they're hearing, they'll move it in the other direction if they don't find compelling what they're hearing. What you'll see is if you say the term "global warming", particularly early in a message, the dials will, essentially, drop.

Jolyon Jenkins: You actually call it "toxic" in your report.

Drew Westen: Oh, it's absolutely toxic. "Climate change" is somewhat better, but we found that the best way to talk about it is, frankly, to talk in terms of "pollution" and "our deteriorating atmosphere", which everyone seems to get.

Jolyon Jenkins: "Our deteriorating atmosphere" is a phrase that works for everyone.

Drew Westen: That was the term that, if you look at a zero to ten scale, where ten is "I find this compelling" and zero is "I find this un-compelling", I think that was in the eights, which is a really, really high score.

Jolyon Jenkins: But isn't that because, when you use that phrase, people are thinking of visible pollution, they're thinking of exhaust fumes, of smokestacks, of health problems? Localised pollution, not necessarily about climate change?

Drew Westen: Yes, and in fact that's part of the power of it. One of the problems of the language of climate change is that we speak in terms of abstractions, as opposed to in terms of things that people can picture. So what you need to do is, you need something that's evocative, and everyone understands pollution. You put it that way, and suddenly people say: "Oh, wait a minute. I've seen that coming out of the smokestacks."

Jolyon Jenkins: But isn't it a bit dishonest, because you're framing it in terms of health, whereas it really isn't a health issue at all? Carbon dioxide isn't damaging to your lungs.

Drew Westen: Oh, this has been one of the arguments that those of us who are working on, had a talk about this with the American people, often had some disagreements with some of the policy people in the environmental movement until they actually saw what the effectiveness of messages, one way or the other is - the average person gets pollution.

Jolyon Jenkins: One reason why the pure green message goes down so badly is because if you accept it, it seems to mean austerity, which is not the American way. And maybe this explains the growth in climate change scepticism or outright denialism. Solitaire Townsend of the consultancy Futerra.

Solitaire Townsend: I have great sympathy for those who wish to deny climate change. Anybody in their right mind should want climate change not to be the case. Let's be very clear about this. We are all anti-climate change, when it gets right down to it. I'm entirely unsurprised by the growth in denial. In fact, I think we've created the desire for denial by selling this double negative, of the negative of the threat of climate change linked with the negative of the sacrifices you'd have to do, to deal with it. Climate Hell. Far more compelling would be a vision of a low-carbon Heaven, i.e. something which we could bring about, that we could make happen.

Jolyon Jenkins: But most of the messages which environmentalists put forward are about giving something up. Giving up foreign holidays. Giving up having your house as warm as you want. Giving up foreign food. I mean, it's all about denial of things that you like having. How do you sell the idea of not taking foreign holidays, not hopping on an aeroplane, whenever you want to? Where's the upside of that?

Solitaire Townsend: So why do you pop on a flight, in the first place? You pop on a flight to go somewhere hot. Gorgeous, foreign... If you can give people exactly the same outcome, I don't see that any of us are going to be fighting for the Heathrow Terminal 5 experience.

Jolyon Jenkins: So where is this exciting warm holiday to be had in Britain or on a train...

[They laugh.]

Solitaire Townsend: Well, actually...

Jolyon Jenkins: ... in January?

Solitaire Townsend: Well, actually I'm going down to Marrakech for Christmas.

Jolyon Jenkins: By train.

Solitaire Townsend: By train. And I get to go to somewhere gorgeous, hot, fabulous, within basically two days' journey. But it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. It feels like a benefit. Those are the substitutes that we need to find. Better than substitutes. And that's the challenge for the environment movement. It's - stop telling us "don't". Keep telling us "instead".

Jolyon Jenkins: Solitaire Townsend recently wrote a report called Sell the Sizzle, arguing that climate change is no longer a scientist's problem - it's now a salesman's problem.

Solitaire Townsend: To sell the sizzle is to look at those lifestyles, to look at that low-carbon lifestyle and work out: what's good about it? What, actually, is fantastic about that low-carbon lifestyle? If you live a low-carbon lifestyle, will you get eight hours solid sleep? Is that the major selling point of actually changing some of the environmental behaviours? Because there's a lot of people out there who would quite happily undertake some serious behaviour changes if they thought they'd get eight hours solid sleep every night, because of it. We don't know if that's true, or not, yet. We're testing it, but what we're trying to find is not what the payoff of a low-carbon lifestyle is for the planet, it's what's the payoff of a low-carbon lifestyle for the people. And once we get that, that's the sizzle and that we can sell.

Jolyon Jenkins: I've come to see one of Solitaire Townsend's ideas for making a low-carbon lifestyle seem glamorous. It's called a "swish party", and it's taking place in Brixton, in a trendy bar above a cinema. As you can hear, it's pretty crowded, and there are people queueing up the stairs to get in. On the upper level, which is where I am, are rows of clothes on hangers, and, behind me, a bank of sewing machines.

Solitaire Townsend: Clothes have a huge footprint. There's been some work that someone said [?] that actually, in terms of indirect footprint, your clothes count for almost ten per cent of your indirect carbon footprint. So, either you get women to care less about clothing and fashion, and get them to care more about their connection to the environment, or you find a way to substitute going to Primark every week to buy a new outfit, for something else. We chose to try to find a substitute, and a swishing party is when a bunch of, let's be honest, girls get together. They bring clothing which is smart and lovely but which they no longer wear, and they have an incredibly glamorous jumble sale. [Laughs.] The whole swishing concept was designed to try to press exactly the same buttons as the sales do, as a shopping experience does.

Man's voice: The way we're doing it, we're bringing people up in groups of numbers. When you come up, you'll have seven minutes or so to have a look round.

Jolyon Jenkins: Have you found anything you like?

Woman: Yes, I've found lots - in fact I've got too many things that I like. I'm having to, kind of, pick things up and put things down, in order of preference.

Jolyon Jenkins: Why did you come here?

Woman: Oh, my friend told me, and then, um, I've got lots of things that I guiltily purchased and have never worn, but they're in good nick so I thought I'd bring them and try and find something better.

Jolyon Jenkins: Would you come to another one?

Woman: Yeah, definitely.

Jolyon Jenkins: Would you come to them regularly, do you think?

Woman: I think so, yeah. I'm kind of flipping [?], I get bored, I want to move with the trends but haven't got the budget that allows for that to happen, so... Actually, it's a nice little environment up here. Ooh, I'm going to leave you, because I want to go and look at more things - thanks.

Woman's voice: If you see items that you'd like to adjust, do feel free to join the sewing area.

Jolyon Jenkins: I don't know whether swishing parties can displace clothes shopping in any serious way. Or whether "staycations" and train travel can be made to seem more fun than flying. Or whether having solar panels on your roof can become the new status symbols. But tastes and social norms can and do change radically, over quite short time scales. And I think you'd be foolish to bet against it.

Presenter: In Denial - Climate Change on the Couch, was presented and produced in Bristol by Jolyon Jenkins.