What can we learn from the polarised path of climate change discourse as we start to think about pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere?
Here’s a threaded summary of our new paper in Environmental Communication tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 1/n
Here’s a threaded summary of our new paper in Environmental Communication tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 1/n
@LukaKemp @neetberg @willozap @ProfMarkHowden @SharonFrielOz @DownieChristian @claredecastella @ANU_Climate @ANUCrawfordClim Emissions reductions alone are unlikely to secure a safe climate. Therefore we probably need to complement ambitious emissions reductions with negative emissions – removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
(If meaningful action on climate had been taken when the alarm bells were first sounded we wouldn’t need to have this conversation… But that’s an aside)
Negative emissions (NE) techs can be lots of different things (check out this paper from @MCC_Berlin (et al.) colleagues for thorough overview iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…), including:
Planting trees in a particular way, spreading crushed rocks on agricultural land, sucking the air through a machine to scrub out the CO2. In common they share the removal of atmospheric CO2, and – critically – storage.
Because of the diversity of approaches NE can speak across lots of different interests – depending on how it is governed it may open new industries and new opportunities for lots of different folks while contributing to solving the climate crisis.
AND right now – NE is only just breaking onto the policy agenda. So few people know about NE (compared to other policy issues) that it hasn’t yet developed a political identity. @ANUFennerSchool PhD Scholar Aaron Tang talks a LOT about this (following Broehm et al. 2015 re DACS).
We don’t have governance frameworks for NE. It’s piecemeal, and is governed ‘by default’ says @neetberg. There’s also a whole lot of research questions that still need to be answered. So it’s kind of a blank slate… for now.
And so our critical argument is that if we have to do this negative emissions thing, it doesn’t need to be limited by the ideological baggage of the broader climate change debate. IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE DYSFUNCTIONAL!
Through synthesising research on the polarisation of climate change, we draw these lessons:
Lesson 1: Avoid ideologically bundling negative emissions with a pre-existing ideology. Let it be a common interest, and don’t turn it into a political wedge issue.
Think about how negative emissions can appeal to different values, identity groups, and interests, and explore these cross-partisan dimensions, rather than emphasising left interests at the expense of the right, and vice versa.
This, really, is the key point. You can stop reading here if you like. But we think that there are 2 other important lessons that have value independently, and also are essential if we want to avoid ideological bundling…
Lesson 2: Choose communication frames carefully. How we frame issues shapes how people think about them, and this matters especially in the early stages of opinion formation.
There is a TONNE of research on framing and climate change, and much is fascinating. (Just ask @geo_nic who is doing a PhD on exactly this.) We know certain frames can emphasise an appeal to some values and not others, or signal to some identities and against others.
We need to be smart about what this could mean for good governance. (And a good way to be smart is to start by asking @DrRobBellamy about his research on the policy-tech interface for social acceptability of NE.)
Lesson 3: Use non-partisan, trusted messengers. Who tells us about issue X matters for what we think about issue X. Are they trusted, are they smart, and – critically – are they *like me*?
All of us – ALL OF US – use assumptions about who delivers a message as a shortcut for judging whether the message is trustworthy. We like messages from people who appear to be part of our ‘in group’ and are suspicious of messages from the ‘out group’.
We should look at how we can avoid the ‘usual suspects’ and build a broad coalition of critical friends. E.g. @DownieChristian has explored the US Conservative renewable energy group @GreenTeaCo working across traditional political divides.
We also know that for the most actively engaged folks, there is a trend toward selecting ideologically aligned media sources. And that the longer an issue is in the media the more likely it is to become polarised.
Like with framing, this means having trusted messengers early on is really, really important. Good thing we still have this opportunity to get started on the right foot for negative emissions.
Avoiding polarisation DOESN’T mean avoiding the hard questions. It means we keep the conflict functional – keep people talking, exploring, questioning. But we don’t want trench warfare that uses NE as a battleground for ideological flexing.
Starting the discourse and the governance regime on a constructive path, not polarised, will be critical if the promise of negative emissions is to be met and dangerous climate change avoided.
I loved working on this w awesome team @LukaKemp @neetberg @claredecastella @DownieChristian @SharonFrielOz @willozap @ProfMarkHowden @frankjotzo @fmarked & Michael Platow @ANUCrawford @ANU_Climate @et_hub @ANUCrawfordClim
Our essay lives online here: tandfonline.com/eprint/UNRAD73… hit me up on email if you can’t get through to the full text. End! n/n
