Twenty years after the first COP and our carbon emissions are still rising.
This was the most spine-chilling takeaway from last week’s Scaling Up Net Zero conference, hosted at the stunning World Museum in Liverpool by the Net Zero Hub North West. The various panels included representatives of various areas, councils, and organisations from across the North West and ended with both metro mayors, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham speaking.
Throughout the day, there was was an echoing message that across the board we are failing to properly engage with and communicate the climate agenda with the general public.
Don’t get me wrong – there are clearly some interesting examples of public engagement exercises that are taking place and pockets of engaged citizens who will attend events, buy heat pumps and eat less meat. But for every individual who is taking action, there are others being talked out of action because of misinformation, and anecdotal horror stories that happened to a friend of a friend.
Too often the climate agenda – net zero – whatever you want to call it is left in the echo chambers of the already converted.
Metro Mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotherham said to the attendees “We are doing ok. We will do better,” and it hits home.
There are great things happening to combat the climate crisis – you probably don’t have to look far. But we have to get better at talking about it, across generations, communities and sectors.
To effectively communicate about the climate agenda means stripping off the politics, and jargon; it means using real words to describe real actions that you’re asking them to take. We need to inspire behaviour change, not just speak in platitudes. And sometimes we need to be brave enough to stop shouting everything to everyone and really understand the audiences we are trying to engage with.
We can help, if you want.
Alma 