The land of climate action: five things that would be different there

If we lived in a world where we really knew how to tackle climate change, we would be doing many things differently from today.

Let’s call this mythical, undiscovered world the land of climate action.

Where do we live today? Let’s call it the land of climate change awareness. It’s a world where many are aware that climate change is happening and will get more serious if left unchecked. Despite this knowledge, we are marred in endless debates on how to tackle it. As a result, our collective efforts to deal with it fall short of what is needed.

As a neuroscientist, I noticed years ago that insights into how our brains and minds operate were missing in action in our efforts to tackle climate change. These insights could help us turn the land of climate change awareness into the land of climate action. You might think I’m talking about ‘consumer behaviour change’ – but think again. It’s ‘professional behaviour change’ that I’m talking about.

Here are five of my favourite things about the land of climate action – mindsets and practices that are common sense and conventional wisdom over there, but seem odd and naive in the land of climate change awareness.

We tell stories of action, not stories of concern

In the land of climate change awareness, the dominant climate narrative is about ‘climate change as a threatening problem’ – the ‘code red for humanity’ type of story.

The reason for this? A piece of conventional wisdom that we need to raise people’s awareness or concern about climate change in order to drive action across society. After 30 years of trying with little to show for it, we should start taking that conventional wisdom with a grain of salt.

In contrast, in the land of climate action, all communications and stories about climate change are about what we are doing to tackle it – all the way from science and politics to how people are dealing with it on the ground.

Reports by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assess examples of mitigation and adaptation action that have already happened and give us the ‘action cookbook’ with options on what we need more of.

The UN Chief talks about “code green for humanity”: how we have an opportunity as well as the need to invest in a better future for everyone, and where successfully addressing climate change is the side-effect or a co-benefit of creating that better future for all.

Journalists, media creatives and artists tell stories of how business and finance professionals, civil servants, engineers, lawyers, teachers and farmers take action on climate change that is aligned with their professional roles and responsibilities.

Why these stories of action? Because stories of action inspire further action, while stories of concern collectively leave us hopeless, cynical and deflated.

We are capable of separating true expertise from mere opinion

In the land of climate change awareness, we are constantly given the opportunity – if not the obligation – to express our opinions. When we do so, it is in the hope of persuading other people that we are right. We know that in practice, however, this rarely ever works.

We think the problem is with them – the people who don’t listen to us. But what if the problem lies with us for thinking our opinions are important?

Everyone has some kind of expertise – technical, professional and lived – but nobody is an expert in everything. In our scramble to deal with climate change, true expertise that could help us tackle the problem is drowning in a sea of mal- or half-informed opinions.

That includes ‘mere opinion’ from professional experts who stray outside of their area of expertise or whose professional expertise gets them to discount the lived expertise of people who have deep knowledge but would normally not be perceived as experts.

In the land of climate action, people are better at distinguishing where their expertise ends and their opinion begins. Debate clubs and opinion pieces don’t exist. Social norms value ‘listening’ over ‘broadcasting’. And that makes the next thing a lot easier.

We know how to collaborate, especially with people who have different perspectives and expertise

In the land of climate change awareness, siloed expertise, polarisation and fragmentation of opinion on what to do about climate change are leading to action paralysis.

‘Silver-bullet syndrome’ reigns, with people pursuing singular solutions to the exclusion of all others. Political and business leaders either can’t take decisions because they don’t feel they have the permission or mandate or when decisions do get taken by one government or company CEO, they are frequently undone by the next.

In contrast, in the land of climate action, people value putting their knowledge and expertise together over arguing their own position.

They work together with those who have different perspectives, even opposing convictions, realising that every individual has only access to a few of the puzzle pieces to solve the problem. Terms like ‘collaborative truth-seeking’ and ‘distributed co-creation’ capture the practices that are used to hatch solutions from the expertise of many.

We don’t say ‘We can’t change that!’. Instead, we say ‘How do we change that?’

In the land of climate change awareness, every sector of society has assumptions, working practices, unwritten norms and written regulations that create the perception of barriers to realising the necessary change.

Be it the constraints imposed by oppositional and multi-party politics; the way responsibilities are fragmented across government departments; the mandates of influential organisations like a national Central Bank or international organisations like the IPCC; a media organisation’s impartiality charter or perceived audience preferences; the Haldane principle dictating the peer review process of research proposals; the fiduciary duty of an investment manager; assumptions about economic growth, market purity, cost-benefit analysis, company performance and job security; the unwritten cab-rank norm that stops lawyers, consultants, engineers and marketeers from turning down certain clients; or the idea that the role of farmers is to feed the world. In the land of climate awareness, all these factors are frequently called upon by professionals from a certain sector to justify why a certain change is impossible.

The consequence? Everyone else is waiting for everyone else to act first. Everyone sees their own professional constraints and limitations, and thinks that change will need to come from other sectors or professions – unaware that in those other places, similar constraints are preventing change from happening too.

In the land of climate action, similar constraints and limitations exist because most of the time, the existing processes and systems have been put in place for valid reasons. One would not, for example, want research funding decisions to be taken on a political whim; the independence of central banks to be replaced by political control and opposition parties to be dissolved; or international organisations to be run without accountability.

But, in the land of climate action, when professionals become aware of situations where systemic factors prevent the right climate action from being taken, the default response is not ‘We can’t change that!’. It is ‘How do we change that?’ It has become second nature to explore how to change the system such that a particular blocker to action can be removed – while still preserving the outcome that the existing principle was put in place for.

This skill of knowing how to change the system is grounded in the previous two: the ability to see the boundaries of one’s own expertise and the ability to work together with people who have a different perspective and expertise to oneself.

In the land of climate action, there is no need for protest activism

In the land of climate change awareness, protest activism is the natural consequence of our collective inability to deal with climate change. It follows from the frustration that people feel when they see those in positions of influence and power say, ‘We can’t change that!’

But protest activism is a double-edged sword: it can come from people who want more change faster, and it can come from people who are set against a particular instance of change that they feel is being foisted upon them. 

One might think that a preferable situation would be if those in positions of influence would ‘listen to the voice of the people’, but in the light of ongoing disagreements, what voice exactly are we referring to?

In the land of climate action, the situation is different: there are no activists because everyone is involved in action – in doing.

The social norm is one of collaboration, not antagonism. When new problems come to light, they are listened to and made sense of rather than dismissed. Efforts are undertaken to align different interests and perspectives around common solutions – and even if that doesn’t always work perfectly, it takes the sting out of most societal debates.

A naive pipedream or a land within reach?

The land of climate action may seem very far off at the moment. But as abolitionist campaigner Henry Ward Beecher said in the 1860s: “The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.” Beecher was spot on for his own area of campaigning. It took a good century before the Civil Rights Act normalised the change he was trying to affect.

At University College London’s Climate Action Unit, we are following Beecher’s thinking to make the land of climate action a reality and to turn the philosophy into society’s common sense.

We help journalists and creatives tell stories of action. We design interactions for groups of professionals to make sure that their expertise floats to the top and ‘mere opinion’ sinks to the bottom. We find the places in the system where connections are broken and create interventions to mend them. We build bridges between professional communities where none exist. We help to turn people’s natural response of ‘We can’t’ change that!’ into ‘How do we change that?’ by providing the mental tools to collaborate and affect systems change.

In doing so, we are hoping that everyone will find their own unique role to play in the big societal transition in front of us. 

In the words of a recent participant in one of our workshops, who emailed us six months later: “I learned from your talk that we can all do something within our reach. I know what I can do. I do have agency in that domain.”

Now let’s make this response the norm.

This article is a contribution from a member or partner organisation of Friends of Europe. The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.