Next Period - Science (Or is it Politics)

I’ve mentioned before the difficult situation climate science finds itself in, research as part of the 6 Americas project tells us that increasing levels of scientific literacy do not positively affect peoples willingness to act on climate change. In fact the opposite is true with greater understanding of the issue potentially creating greater political polarization (Kahan 2012). This is due to our formation of worldviews, subsequently rather than adapt this view in the face of new evidence we attempt to twist the evidence in favour of what we already believe. (This is both skeptics and believers guys so remember to hold on to your scientific integrity!). I’ve shown how a variety of tools may help address this inaction; narratives, framing of the problem, ignoring it all together in favour of talking about other issues e.g. clean growth or greater stakeholder engagement but a recent paper from the USA (Stevenson et al 2014)has pointed in another direction.

Did they come to these conclusions themselves? Courtesy of the Guardian (An art project about climate change and sustainability by year 3 pupils at Ambleside primary school, Cornwall. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Alamy Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images/Alamy) [Accessed 18/12/2014]

Children are yet to form worldviews (Vollerberg et al 2001), they learn, question and change opinions far better than adults do. Increasing their scientific literacy then may not dictate their risk perception in quite the same way as adults. Stevenson found increasing both the amount and quality of earth sciences education led to children more concerned about climate change in later life.

Whilst this on the face of it seems positive it’s a treacherous area. Firstly the school system in the US is a very politicized arena. Wars have been waged in senate and congress over the teaching of evolution and to introduce climate change into that fray is not easy. The second, a point raised by George Marshall when I asked him about the topic, is that we must be careful not to use children as propaganda tools. Whilst an excellent scientific education is of course brilliant, introducing the politics behind it, either directly or indirectly isn’t something children should be subjected to. I’m all for increased levels of education but this should give children the analytical skills to come to their own conclusions, and help them to be better scientists, not prescribe a worldview either way.

From Blue to Green to Red and back again

So we’ve seen how public opinion on Climate Change is under threat (Ungar 2014), but has UK political action followed suit. Carter (2014) presents an excellent rundown of the history of the Climate Change movement in UK policy which highlights some interesting points. Unlike climate politics in the US British attitudes to policy have been characterized by cross-party support. The last election was characterized by each party trying to ‘out-green’ the other and helped shift from preference accommodation to preference shaping of the public. This help build both media coverage and public opinion to action at the time. In 2010 David Cameron promised to be the ‘most green government ever’ with the catchphrase ‘vote blue get green’, but has this actually happened? As I mentioned in the last post political action for things such as climate change is stifled when unemployment and GDP suffer, and this has contributed to the Coalitions inaction. However one key driver of action identified by Carter is that of a single party majority. The Con-Lib coalition has left many conservative backbenchers unhappy, and increasingly we are seeing a wedge driven between the two parties over issues such as climate change. Not only has Cameron’s rhetoric fallen off, the slate of MPs employed in DECC following Chris Huhne has included some prominent climate denialists. Owen Paterson’s tirades over the ‘Green Blob’ and his work for the Global Warming Policy Foundation don’t exactly appeal to progressive policy. Whilst in his time as junior energy minister John Hayes pledged to no more onshore wind farms and actively fought against subsidies for renewables which he claimed were a ‘green tax’.

Hope is on the horizon, Britain has pledged significantly to the Green Climate Fund, and pledges on emissions reduction from other nations give hope for British action (or reaction). However with UKIP on the rise there is cause to worry as well. The party may hold the balance of power come the next election and their desire to scrap the seminal Climate Change Act (2008) and of course leave the EU emissions trading scheme. International action is certainly on the agenda, but a future for British policy is highly uncertain, prominent voices such as Sir David King and Ed Davey are working in the right direction, but with public opinion wavering it is unlikely to be a major issue for the next general election.