We had some great questions in the session that we didn’t have time to discuss so we have put some answers together.
Does this version [of the research] include climate change naysayers, perhaps under Dissenting Disruptors?
There are shared characteristics between Dissenting Disruptors and climate change naysayers but it doesn’t mean that naysayers are only found in that segment or that all Dissenting Disrupters are climate change naysayers, just that it is a common characteristic for people in this group.
Which of these 7 segments will take action on climate change? Some are obvious but who are the less obvious ones?
We spoke about this a little in the webinar but we think there are people in all the segments who can be engaged to take action, depending on a whole range of factors like the context, issue, messenger and desired outcome. However, the majority in some of the segments, such as progressive activists, are closer to taking action than others, such as sceptical scrollers, so it comes down to the overall objective for your communications. That’s why we encourage organisations to both prioritise which audiences they want to focus on to inspire them to lean in and take action and to set realistic targets for how much impact that engagement has on the different segments.
Do you have suggestions for how to talk to people who reject statistics and always assume they are being used to manipulate?
There is a broader issue here than just how to engage people who are suspicious of statistics or research, which is that we now largely have a cultural discourse where all forms of evidence and experience are contested. The end result is many don’t believe the evidence or are confused and don’t know what to believe or trust. For people in both camps, there is a power in authentic story-telling, peer endorsement and adding authority to the message through using a voice that has clout with the audience. Of these, story-telling tends to do the best job of cutting through the noise and confusion and argument and connecting with people on an empathetic and emotional level.
Is there a vested interest by some parties in lobbying against climate change, and how is that affecting discourse? Are climate change deniers getting more of an audience?
There are many organisations lobbying against climate change and they have deep pockets and the innate advantage of campaigning to defend the status quo rather than pushing for change.
The good news, backed by this research, is that the majority of people are worried about climate change and want to see it tackled. However, those attitudes aren’t fixed and what the sheer scale of efforts to promote climate scepticism and denial is doing is gnawing away at that consensus and creating doubt in many people’s minds. It is why it is so important for organisations with a desire to combat climate change to be constantly trying to engage broad audiences on the issue, keep it front of mind and continue to sell the benefits of action.
Do you know if there’s a difference between how citizens and those segments perceive local government in comparison to national government?
The research Climate Outreach conducted did not explore differing attitudes in relation to local or national government but there are some really useful data sets and research reports to dig into for insights on trust in government generally.
The OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions provides an international picture of public trust in government, based on research in the OECD countries.
The UK Parliament produced a comprehensive report on trust in both Parliament and the government generally, including extensive references for further research and data sources.
The LGIU (Local Government Information Unit) in the UK regularly conducts research on public attitudes towards local government and significantly shows that people have higher levels of trust in local councils compared to national government. However, running counter to that is the finding that a majority lack trust in councils to act in the best interests of the people they represent.
Can you give examples of very effective messengers?
On the question of messengers, Climate Outreach did ask people about this as part of the research. The top messenger for almost all audiences on climate and nature was, not surprisingly perhaps, David Attenborough. But he was run close by a new and more surprising entrant: Jeremy Clarkson. The TV programme, Clarkson’s Farm, has really cut through – people cite it as one they enjoy watching and which makes them think about climate change, and the fact that Clarkson ‘used to be sceptical about climate’ but now is running the farm and seeing the impacts is something they think is ‘real’ and they really connect with.
I wondered if any mention of an action v impact time gap had come up in your research? i.e. How do you effectively communicate that people taking action now, might only make the climate better for people much further in the future, and that it might not make a big difference to climate change that is already locked in and impacting people in the present day?
Nothing covering that point came up in the research that Climate Outreach conducted. It is certainly one of the challenges when it comes to making climate action relevant and urgent for public audiences as promises of jam tomorrow obviously aren’t as motivating as realising immediate benefits. One obvious approach that has been used a great deal in this area is focusing on children and the desire to act now and secure a better future for them. There are lots of examples using animals and securing their future / saving them from extinction, to the point of cliché in the case of polar bears. These are definitely valuable ways to motivate audiences who won’t necessarily feel the benefits themselves.
Forster is currently doing work with the Clean Air Fund on getting greater awareness and action on tackling super pollutants like methane. black carbon and tropospheric ozone, and a focus in this area does provide an opportunity to promote how climate action can lead to benefits that people and communities will feel in the short term. These super pollutants are fast acting and short lived and are responsible for 45% of global warming to date. Cutting them can reduce temperatures four times faster than action on carbon dioxide alone. The benefits would be felt in communities in the short term, from reducing extreme weather events like flooding, to cleaner air and fewer life-threatening heatwaves. They have the potential to deliver a unique triple win: tackling climate change, radically improving health globally and adding trillions to the economy.
They offer a very powerful and positive example of making the benefits of tackling climate change relevant and motivating for broad audiences.
Community Energy ticks so many of the positive, empowering local stories boxes. Did your survey differentiate between corporate owned renewables vs community owned renewables?
There was nothing in the research that explored that differentiation.
What about when you have to build engagement and support in a community that is dominated by, or controlled by, dissenting disruptors?
As we have outlined in an earlier answer, the first step is to be realistic and pragmatic about what you can achieve in terms of engagement and action within a community characterised in that way with the resources you have available to you. You can then use the bridges and walls exercise to determine what you can lead with in terms of messaging and what needs to be avoided. In terms of bridges to the dissenting disruptors audience, you could foreground the issues relating to climate change that they are most worried about, such as rising bills and harm to wildlife and nature, and consider whether it is feasible to recruiter a peer messenger to be the face and voice of engagement efforts with that community.
How do we strike the balance between wanting to be objective – using facts and statistics to back us up so it’s not seen as only our opinion – but wanting to reach the emotion of the message and avoid stats people could say are warped!
Using robust and credible statistics and facts is a fantastic approach for engaging some audiences as it adds credibility and authority to a campaign. Alongside that credibility and authority, ensuring stats and facts are robust and credible is less about being viewed as objective as you almost certainly aren’t when campaigning or seeking to influence, and more about reducing the chances of others challenging those stats and facts to undermine what you are trying to do or distract the intended audience from your core message. What’s more important is to supplement stats and facts with story-telling, strong advocacy and creative approaches so you are using all the tools available to engage audiences and not relying on one of them to do the whole job.
Any tips on making technical topics like COP negotiations and NDCs more accessible?
Bringing to life technical issues like those with real world examples and personal testimony is one of the most effective ways to make them more accessible to broader audiences. For example, taking one aspect of NDCs and showing how it affects a community or sector on the ground and what commitments and action would deliver in terms of benefits for that community can really create a connection with audiences. It also has the added bonus of increasing engagement even with very technical and knowledgeable audiences who benefit just as much from grounding those issues in our everyday experiences.
We need to offer a clear, compelling, and coherent story about what the sorts of lives we want people to be free to pursue, and what type of society we want to have to support those dreams – and while we know this, our movement remains very focused on leading on climate policy – how do we shake this up?
One way to shake that up would be a much greater concerted effort to provide more platforms for the voices, experiences and expertise of those communities who are already being disproportionately affected by climate change and to support them to articulate and promote the positive future they want for themselves and the people they care about. It is still the case far too often that people from those communities are given the chance to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, to be the canary in the coalmine, but not given the same opportunity to outline their hopes and ambitions for a better life as a result of tackling that crisis.