There’s been a long-simmering debate, of sorts, about whether climate communications should focus on messaging that asks people to do their part as individuals (by driving less, eating less meat, recycling, etc.) or on messages that call for systemic changes through legislation and other policy reforms.
Earlier this year, Mark Kaufman had a feature in Mashable about how oil giant BP “first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term ‘carbon footprint,’” starting with their “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004. It was, to quote the words of Benjamin Franta in Kaufman’s piece, “one of the most successful, deceptive PR campaigns maybe ever.”
And it’s not like that was an accident. BP put significant resources into carefully crafting and then testing the message to make sure it did exactly what we wanted.
While some well-intentioned voices may remain committed to the concept of individual action as a messaging priority, a new study provides the latest confirmation that this is a misguided approach.
Published this week in the American Meteorological Society journal Weather, Climate and Society, the authors gave it an amusingly blunt title: ‘Don’t tell me what to do’: Resistance to climate change messages suggesting behavior changes.
To test whether calls for individual changes or public policy were more effective, and whether attributing those calls to a “climate scientist” made a difference, they surveyed nearly 2,000 people.
The results showed that with or without a supposed climate scientist delivering the message, “recommendations for behavioral changes decreased individuals’ willingness to take personal actions to reduce greenhouse gases, decreased willingness to support pro-climate candidates, reduced belief in the accelerated speed of climate change, and decreased trust in climate scientists.”
Basically, calls to fly less, drive less, eat less beef, use less hot water or adjust the thermostat just pissed people off. On the other hand, calls to limit pollution, stop deforestation, require industry to transition to sustainable energy, and improve gas mileage and energy efficiency triggered no such adverse reaction.
So while yes, we all need to individually make climate-conscious decisions in our personal lives, yelling at people to make personal sacrifices instead of systemic changes appears to only piss them off.
Not exactly a surprising finding, but always nice to get confirmation that when Big Oil tells you something about climate change, odds are it’s self-serving.
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