Confused and Scared and Deeply in Denial

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Confused and Scared and Deeply in Denial

• Improving climate change communication and
  facilitating social change

Susanne C. Moser, Ph.D. Lisa Dilling,
Ph.D. ESIG Coffee Talk, February 24, 2004
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The Not-so-lucky Clover Leaf of Communicating
Urgency, Need for Change
Complexity time lag in climate system
What now?
Societal structures and values resistant to change
Climate change no longer just a science problem
People perceive no urgency
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The Difficult Character of Climate Change

• Global
• Complex system (with lags and thresholds)
• Defined and perceived as slow/gradual or as
  occurring in the far future
• Difficult to detect
• Causes pervasive gtgt solutions challenging
  (we have found the scapegoat and it is us)
• Impacts dispersed not all bad many
  creeping phenomena
• Cumulative, synergistic
• Uncertainty pervasive
• Politically very controversial

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Public Perceptions of Climate Change

• 90 of American public aware of global warming
• For 30 it is personally serious, urgent, worth
  worrying about
• Still confusion about causes of global warming
• Global warming is inevitable and unfixable
• Related to irreversible deterioration of moral
  values
• Few know about solutions most are (believed to
  be) ineffective or irrelevant
• Few if any studies have looked at adaptation
  climate variability
• The typical global warming news story
  overwhelms and
  immobilizes people.
  
  (Frameworks Institute 2003)

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Societal Resistance to Change

• Some examples
• A power plant has a design life of 30 years
• A dam is built to last for decades to 100 years
• Dominant economic paradigm and supporting social
  structures last decades to centuries
• Values change at generational timescales

The conditions that brought us climate change,
as well as the conditions surrounding future
options for dealing with it, are embedded in
socioeconomic structures and value systems,
embracing material advancement and fossil fuels
structures and values that are highly resistant
to change. Trumbo and Shanahan,
2000
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Confused and Scared and Deeply in Denial

• OUTLINE
• The communication social change interface
• Communication needs
• Social change at all levels
• A bottom-up framework for communication and
  social change
• Challenges and outcomes of
  initial project

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Why the Communication Social Change Interface?

• What is not seen does not exist
• Detection and naming of problem
• Public agenda setting
• What is not understood is dismissed, denied, or
  polemically discussed
• Facilitation of informed public discourse about
  issue and solutions
• How something is framed determines response
• Influence on issue culture
• What is not talked about exerts no political
  pressure
• Link between public discourse and political stage
• Without accessible solutions we will do nothing
• Critical RD, promotion
• gtgt Critical role for science/scientists
  (educator, supporter,
  ally/adversary, engineer)

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Climate Change Action Communication Needs
PREVENTION, MITIGATION (ADAPTATION)
ADAPTATION (MITIGATION)

• Anticipatory, planned, strategic action
• Actions taken by governments, public
  decision-makers, and business leaders
• Legislation, regulation, incentives
• Convincing causality, need for action recognized,
  need for probablistic climate information, for
  advance planning

• Autonomous, reactive, instantaneous action
• Actions taken by individuals, private
  decision-makers, agencies
• Behavioral changes, administrative actions
• Need for present-time weather or near-term
  climate information for response to extreme
  events, variability

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The Need for Tailored and Effective Communication

• COMMUNICATING
• What?
• How much?
• In what format?
• When?
• How often?
• To what end?
• And most of all
• To whom?

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Social Change Where to begin?

• Individuals? all, specific ones
• Businesses?
• NGOs?
• Government?
• International
• National
• State
• Local

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Theories of Social Change
structure vs. agency still
Individuals
Small Informal Collectives
Private Not-for-Profits
Private Businesses
Public Institutions
gt gt gt gt gt Society at large lt lt lt lt lt

• Theories of social (counter)movements
  (mobilization, opportunities, resources)
• Diffusion of innovation theory

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A Bottom-Up Framework Communication-Behavior
Change Continuum
Unwieldy problem
Mental Models
Message Framing
Messenger Choice
Communication Channel Choice
Message Reception
Audience Choice
Behavior Change Sought
Identification of Barriers
Program Design Planning
Behavior Change Tools
Maintenance
Termination
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Challenges for Project/Workshop

• Walking Our Talk
• Communicating across disciplinary boundaries
• Communicating across professional boundaries
• Raising awareness of climate impact and keeping
  it to a minimum
• Theoretical Integration/Complementarity
• Different disciplines
• Levels of social change
• Maintaining credibility for academics and
  relevance for practitioners
• Balance of research and action agendas

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Expected Outcomes of MacArthur Project

• 1. Edited volume and synthesis paper
• 2. Research agenda
• What aspects are we currently neglecting?
• Which do we overstate?
• 3. Action agenda
• What kinds of practical expertise
  would be most useful to draw on?
• How do we hold the line between
  research and advocacy?
• 4. Proposal to NSF (HSD or Biocomplexity)
• Explore communication/social change further
  in regional context (Northeast)

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And useful lessons for NCAR

• What is done with information
• is as important
• as the information itself.
  H. Jesse Smith (2004)

Workshop website http//www.esig.ucar.edu/changew
orkshop/index.html