What does the Seventh Carbon Budget mean for climate communications?
Our Senior Associate Kenza Essalama sat down with our Climate Counsel member Rachael Orr to unpack the Climate Change Committee’s latest report and what it tells us about the future of public engagement on climate action. Rachael is the CEO of Climate Outreach, a charity working with people and organisations to help create new climate stories.
Q: Last week, the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) released its Seventh Carbon Budget (CB7), which provides a recommended limit on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions over the five-year period between 2038 to 2042. What were your biggest takeaways from the report? Did anything surprise you?
A: I thought the framing and the story of the report was really good. Because it's hard, isn't it? We're thinking about things in the future, and what that means for people. The way the CCC was able to chart that pathway was effective and positive. It said that if we get this right, this is what it looks like, and this is what it means for people: cleaner air, warmer homes, more secure energy. Those are the messages that we need to keep hammering home. I also went to the report launch event and there were a lot of people from different sectors there, from farming to food and other industries telling the CCC they had actually been a bit conservative, and that we can potentially move even faster than the report sets out. The narrative around climate and net zero in some bits of the media feels particularly challenging right now. I felt both by the way CB7 was framed and by some of the follow ups that I was hearing from the people really driving the transition that we do have some reasons to be optimistic.
Q: So despite the external content and challenges, the energy in the room was actually quite positive?
A: It was positive. There was a sense of “we can do this; we think we might even be able to go faster”. I thought this was something that I hoped might have come out more strongly in the coverage. We are making progress at a faster pace in a number of areas than we thought we were going to be able to five years ago. The costs of the transition are plummeting too.
Q: Absolutely. And the storytelling around that is so important. One of the core recommendations in the report was for the government to implement an engagement strategy to provide information to households and businesses. So what would your advice be to the current government to nail that and deliver those messages that the public needs?
A: I think they're on it. You know, Kerry McCarthy and her team have committed to this, and there's a team of civil servants working to make it happen. So that's great. But one of their big jobs is making sure that it's a strategy that is owned by other parts of government, not just DESNZ. I think the piece around information and advice and clear messaging is really critical, and I think that comes up in report after report: people don’t feel that they know enough about what is going on and what it means for them, their home, their community, or their workplace. But I think the strategy will be a failure if it's just an information strategy. I think that has to be a core component of it. But the point about engagement is really key. This has to be much more of a two-way conversation with people. I think if people just feel like this is being done to them, or they're being instructed on things to do, they'll push back. It also makes it feel really individualistic. We need a framing of this that is around collective action and collective opportunity. We've all got a role to play. There's a huge opportunity to show that this transition is underway. Lots of people are doing lots of things and I don't think the government tells that story nearly as effectively as it could.
Q: That’s a really good point about that switch from individual to collective framing. In terms of these communications challenges, then, how do you see those evolving in the years ahead? Obviously, we have lots of different politicians who are saying lots of different things about what the public understands and wants when it comes to climate. You’ve done a lot of research and have actually listened to the public. So, from your perspective, what do they actually think?
A: Across the board, people in the UK know about climate change. They're worried about it and they think it's important to do something about it. And people really care about the natural world, from our local parks to the bees in our gardens, to the mountain ranges or the beaches of the UK. People want to make sure that we protect it all. The other thing is that people are increasingly seeing the effects of climate change. There are the really visual impacts like the terrible fires in LA or the floods that we see around the world. People see those pictures on the telly, but also around them. People say things like “my local football pitch is always flooded because it's rained so much” and more people are starting to realise the link to climate change. So we have this base of concern and support for climate action. Where I think that gets more difficult for people is drawing the line between being worried about climate change and actually feeling that you are going to, for example, go out and get a heat pump. Part of that is about communications - we don’t do nearly enough to link the two up for people. But it’s also understanding what is and isn’t possibly for lots of people. If people say they can't afford a heat pump at the moment, that doesn't mean that they don't care about climate change. It means they can't afford a heat pump. So we need policy to work much harder - to make heat pumps affordable - and we need to up our comms game on drawing the links for people. If we don’t quickly do a better job in that space, opponents will continue to mobilise and tell people a very different story.
Q: Absolutely. As you say, the public understands that this is a problem and they want to do something about it. But what are some misconceptions about public attitudes on climate?
A: I think we have to keep really front of mind that the number of people who are actively skeptical about climate change in the UK is really small and I’ve not seen any evidence yet that this proportion of people is getting larger. What we are seeing is this group is getting louder and more organised and the attacks on climate and especially on ‘net zero’ are more sustained. A lot of how we start conversations about climate needs to be by listening to people and understanding how they think and feel about climate. That's sometimes hard, especially for campaigners and activists, because they're so knowledgeable and passionate and they want to tell people the problem and the solution. But actually, for a lot of people, the most effective way to communicate with them about climate is, for example, about the pride in the town that they live in, and the fact that it now has, for example, an allotment…they don't necessarily want to hear about solidarity and global climate justice. So we have to be more disciplined in how we're talking about climate to different people. And we need to be much better at listening to people. This is a very segmented activity, and it takes a lot more groundwork than just broadcast communications. You also have to understand when you might not be the right messenger. We need to think about how we can empower, for example, faith leaders and headteachers and community figures to talk more confidently about climate as well, instead of thinking that it's solely our job to always be doing it.
Q: Really interesting. And a lot of the work you do at Climate Outreach is to digest those dialogues around climate and establish communications principles. On a more granular level, are there any words or phrases that communicators should or shouldn’t use when talking about climate change?
A: Study after study shows that the most effective frame for talking about climate action is protecting what we have for future generations. What we sometimes fail to communicate is why this work is essential. We need to be saying that we need heat pumps so that we can have cheaper energy and healthier homes. We need to explain that we need fewer cars on the road so that we can have cleaner air for us all to breathe. The focus should be on what will be better as a result of taking these actions that will also contribute to lower emissions. The less jargon you can use the better. I still think that climate is too often seen as an elite story. The experts are climate scientists - of course they are. But we need to think more about who else is well placed to tell this story. We still need scientists to remind us of the severity of the science. But we need to be thinking more broadly about who the experts and storytellers are. I think there's more creativity that we could all be showing on that front.
Q: I completely agree with that. I think creativity is exactly what’s lacking right now in the movement!
A: And optimism, right? And not a naïve idea that everything's going to be brilliant. This is going to be hard. But people get that. People aren't stupid. Let's treat people with decency and respect and honesty. I think there was a narrative for a while that climate action is about taking things away from people; stopping them from flying or eating meat. But I think one of the real truths from the evidence in the CB7 was that this is going to be good for us all. And yes, things will change a bit. But it’s in line with how things have always changed, because technology changes and things change and the world changes. This has the potential to make us happier and healthier. And we need to do a better job of highlighting that.
Q: You’ve given us so many excellent insights. To round off, what would be your top three tips for our readers who want to talk to the public effectively about climate change?
A: 1) Keep doing it. There's a lot of evidence at the moment that people are feeling a little worried about communicating on climate. So keep doing it. We need you to be doing it. 2) Tell stories. Tell stories about people who are making changes in their lives, and what that looks and feels like. 3) Don't be trapped by some of the really adversarial, negative frames that we're seeing at the moment. The frames that say you can either have green or you can have growth. We need to show that the growth of the future is clean and green growth, and we need to be defining that frame, rather than defending a different, unhelpful frame.
Q: Thank you Rachael!