How can the climate movement win over climate sceptics?
Fifty years ago, Basil Fawlty famously said “Whatever you do, don’t mention the war,” in order not to offend some German tourists staying at his hotel. Now, Everything Electric host Robert Llewellen has his own dictum: “Whatever you do, don’t mention the climate.”
In one of his podcasts, Llewellen commented on the strange paradox that exists during his broadcasts. When he restricts them solely to discussing renewable energy and electrification, he does not hear a word of opposition from his listeners. However, when the topic of climate change comes up, he is inundated with comments from subscribers who passionately believe global warming is not real. It seems these people are quite happy to support renewable energy as long as they think it is unrelated to the environment. But when Llewellen makes the link between clean energy and emissions reductions, they become hostile.
In this podcast, Llewellen mused over why this should be, and why the vast majority of climate deniers are men – and usually men of middle or older age. His guest, Professor Edward Hawkins of Reading University, made an interesting comment in response. He pointed out that if the advice of climate scientists were that the planet was running short of CO2 and that we needed to emit more of it to prevent dangerous global cooling, then the very same people who now say that climate scientists are frauds would be singing their praises. In other words, it is not science per se that climate sceptics are rejecting; it’s the suite of policies that flow from that science. This is why they hold climate scientists in such contempt: those scientists say we have to change the way we live if we are to have a future. But the sceptics don’t want to change anything. It’s so much easier to simply deny that there is a problem.
This raises an important issue for the climate movement. If we try to sell a message that is unacceptable to people, they will not accept it, however vital it might be to their wellbeing. Even if they know in their heart of hearts that the message is correct, they will still convince themselves that it is not. It’s a bit like smokers, who know they need to quit, but put the decision off into the future. “There’s still plenty of time. I’m not in any danger yet,” they say to themselves. Sadly, many of us also know smokers who left it too late.
For this reason, we have to find a balance between scaring people out of their complacency and giving them hope that all is not lost. Robert Llewellen’s solution is to concentrate on the economic and technical benefits of electrification and renewable energy. If we can bring climate sceptics along with us on those grounds, it doesn’t really matter whether they believe in climate change or not. By putting our energies into hastening the energy transformation, we’ll get the emissions cuts we need and won’t have waste our time arguing with climate sceptics.
Basil Fawlty, doing his best not to mention the war.