Lets not talk about dead polar bears, baby?

Last week, Alastair Tibbitt, representing Greener Leith, was invited by Stop Climate Chaos to join the panel at a Cross Party Group on Climate Change at the Scottish Parliament. The subject was: "Public Engagement and Action on Climate Change." The post below reflects Alastair's personal thoughts.

There is nothing more cringe worthy than seeing a middle aged, balding white man, probably a wee bit sweaty from riding a bike somewhere, musing in public on "how we can make climate change sexy?"

And I say this as a middle aged, balding white man who cycles everywhere.

If you move in some of the circles I find myself in, that picture and and a debate along those lines happens with depressing familiarity. Fortunately, the people talking seem to be getting more diverse as time goes by. Whilst no-one mentioned the 'sexiness' of climate change at Holyrood last week, and those in attendance were pretty diverse, the purpose of the debate ultimately aimed to answer a similar question. What needs to be done bridge the gap between Scotland's world leading rhetoric legislation on climate change, and the reality?

The spur to this discussion was a recently released report by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, called "Facing up to Climate Change." The report was produced by a committee chaired by Professor David Sugden, who once tried to teach me Glacial Geomorphology twenty years ago at Edinburgh University. He didn't remember me, and I must confess, I don't remember any of my Glacial Geomorphology equations, but it was nevertheless marvellous to see him again, however briefly.

You can find the report and the Youtube clip produced by the Leith Agency that aims to introduce it, in this guest post by Claire Wood. There is at least one thing that most people agree on - we need to get more people doing something about climate change. Afterall, if you believe the scientists, and if you've read this far I'm going to assume that you do, then it's clear that we must eventually change our carbon intensive lifestyles. We can do this in a planned, positive way - or the laws of physics will eventually force us too, which will probably be more unpleasant for everyone.

Yet the process of deciding what we should do, how we should do it, when we should do it, and who should pay for it all requires a lot of thought - and a whole lot of debate. Because there are vested interests ready to pounce, and there are issues of social justice to consider and last but not least politics red (or green, or yellow, or orange or blue) in tooth and claw to navigate. And this is the first place where, in my view, the 'activists' have a problem in gaining wider buy-in to the issue.

For a start, however much it pains me to point it out, it seems to me entirely possible to move to a global low carbon society without some sections of society paying any more heed to social justice issues than they have thus far. The extreme free market 'solution' to climate change could see the use of oil restricted to an extremely tiny super-rich who continue to jolly their way around the world on private jets and private boats, insulated from an also greatly diminished in numbers, energy-poor, unwashed proletariat - and the suffering caused by rapid climate change. Because that tiny elite can afford to buy up access to energy.

However, undesirable this future may be to many, if environmentalists insist on coupling what can seem like an extreme political ideology to every carbon cutting discussion everywhere, it is little wonder that some people find climate change discussions a turn-off. Between the future presented above and the vision for the future presented by movements like Transition, there is a big moral debate to be had. Done well, it can open up a space for people to take engage with. If the issue is presented as a lefty 'fait accompli' well, see the response Justin Kenrick received to his recent Bella Caledonia blog post for a classic demonstration of what can happen.

If climate change is as pressing an issue as the science says it is, then surely everyone will need to start with a more open mind about how the undesirable aspects of a low carbon future can be avoided? And for the record, I will argue as passionately as many other 'environmentalists' for what seem to me like fair ways to cut our carbon emissions at a global and national level. However, I know that the principle of "Contraction and Convergence" is a big, technical idea for anyone outside the rarified policy world to get their heads around - and it is but one solution among many.

At a local level, which is why Greener Leith was invited to participate in the Holyrood discussion in the first place, if we've learnt anything it is this:

1. Everyone knows that climate change is happening. Move on.

Lots of campaigns still feel the need to start with an explanation of the science of climate change. But even in 2008 around half the Scots population claimed to know a lot about climate change, with greater numbers regarding it is an important environmental issue.  The question is not is climate change happening? The question to start from is "what do you think we should do about it?"

The video below has a small child explaining the science to people. If you're not confident with numbers and switch off at the first sight of a graph, having a small, precocious child telling you "it's easy" is probably not going to help matters.

2. Pictures of dead animals - particularly ones that don't live in the neighbourhood - don't motivate anyone to do anything positive.

Ironically, the film produced by The Leith agency for the "Changing Climate" report features dead elephants. This, at least, is a change from the usual dead polar bears or penguins.

 The extreme end of the "you are murdering animals" school of climate change communication is this one:

In my view, anything designed to make people feel guilty about a problem like climate change is not really going to be that effective, if it does not provide a meaningful solution too. Of course, the all time worst ever government sponsored climate change guilt trip ad, only killed one dog:

3. Start from the reality that people live with. National ad campaigns miss their target because they're based on national generalisations.

The solutions that seem realistic and engaging to Leithers are probably completely different from those that might work in Letham. Our We Love Leith work demonstrates what people would like to see happen in Leith to cut transport pollution. Some solutions, like promoting and developing the City Car Club, would be utterly pointless in Letham, where an established car club probably doesn't exist - yet.

4. Stop telling people what to do.

The value of the Royal Society report is that is that it attempts to distill the views of a huge number of people and organisations - and makes recommendations based on them. However, too often campaigns are didactic, and often the language in the 'call to action' is based on doing less of something, or saving something, rather than doing something constructive and getting something for it.

Doing good, feels good. Surely it should be an easy sell? Whilst I don't want to pick on the Leith Agency deliberately, a typical example of the national "we're telling you what to do" advert is the Scottish Government's long running Go Greener campaign. Nice creative, but in my view it's altogether the wrong message.

Wouldn't it have been better to give the vast quantities of cash this campaign probably cost to the City Car Club in Edinburgh to promote their services positively? And of course, where the best local solution is something else entirely, money should go to promoting that.

5. Help local people to work out local solutions. But national leaders must lead.

The climate challenge fund is a good thing, as it really has helped people work out some unique local solutions to climate change. And as I hope I've established above, in my view, evidence based, local 'engagement projects' are generally likely to work better than nationally organised ones. Although I should add, that I don't see any particular reason why it is perceived that it is only a job for the voluntary sector to deliver these kinds of local projects.

However, national leaders, in all sectors, still need to show more leadership on this issue.

For example, Scottish Government investment in marketing low carbon travel is wasted if things like this keep happening.This is because it causes what some people might call "cognitive dissonance."

But it is not just a problem that applies to this particular Scottish Government. The culture in most large public sector organisations still has a long way to go if people are to see that climate change is a serious issue and worth taking seriously.

And of course, if we locate the 'problem' only with individual people's behaviour then we also turn people off to taking action on climate change. Because really individual behaviour is only part of the picture. Action on climate change is needed on several levels of government, and as far as I can tell, the research suggests that individual people are unlikely to do things differently if their choices are informed by a world which favours high carbon activity as the 'default' choice - and which doesn't appear to be helping them to 'do the right thing.'

Trying to help people to cycle more in a city where decent cycling infrastructure is omitted on everyday streets - even in new designs - is a classic example I'm only too familiar with. If people can see cycling infrastructure being integrated into every day life then a powerful incentive to start doing it is created. Without this joined up thinking, no amount of YouTube adverts, however well designed, will help Scotland meet it's climate change targets.

6. Be creative.

Do stuff which hasn't been done before. We still need creative people to come up with positive, exciting, engaging, campaigns.

How do you think more people could be inspired to support action on climate change?