One half of climate change battle-front is equipped with scientific analysis, reams of observational and simulation data, and geographic reporting.
There’s that missing half which is equally crucial (if not more) in communicating this. If you have read the previous articles in the series, you may have guessed it already.
The other half of the equation is ‘the people.’ Of course, we know this already. Still, what we need to understand here is about an important aspect of ‘people’-it’s their behavior that we are talking here. Our focus here is the changing of behavior that contributes to climate change (and not on behavior changes that come a result of climate change).
The success in the climate change communication need to result in changing behaviors that contribute to global warming.
The messaging (and the communicator) fails if, despite all the stories, the target audience do not wish to change their behaviors – E.g. they still want to buy a large car (that emits higher CO2), or want to use home air-conditioning that has ozone-depleting ‘HCFC refrigerants’ or want to forge new aluminum, by melting (thus creating CO2 emissions) instead of using some existing scrap aluminums.
One would wonder as to why we seek behavior changes in ‘people’ rather than large scale manufacturing, industry and institutions. Aren’t such industries contributing to the malaise in a big way?
Interestingly, the bigger share of greenhouse gas creation is not effected by industries but by the ‘people’- read ‘you and me.’
In 2009, Hertwich and Peters wrote:
“72% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from household or “lifestyle” consumption, including mobility, diet, and housing, as opposed to government or capital and infrastructure investment..”
Lloyd Alter, writing about a new Pilot Study by Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Aalto University, and D-mat ltd, “1.5-Degree Lifestyles: Targets and Options for Reducing Lifestyle Carbon Footprints.” Technical Report, 2019, says:
“..If you divide that global carbon budget by the population, you get an annual budget of 3.4 metric tonnes per person. Much of that budget (72% on average) or 2.5 metric tonnes, can be attributed to “lifestyle emissions”—the stuff that we can control or that is the result of decisions we have made..”- Article By Lloyd Alter in www.treehugger.com
It is clear that communicators need to play a decisive role in changing behavior of the magical 72% to tip the scales on climate change.
But what to communicate?
Firstly, let us understand of what not to communicate. It is the norm that in communications such as these where macro level issues are involved, many communicators would rush to prescribe ‘steps to take’ along with a list of multiple choices to pick from. That may be a good thing .. until it turns to bad!
(To Be Continued)
