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Climate action and emotion

The role of emotions in climate action has been the subject of a number of studies. Stanley et al. (2021) focussed on eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger, and how they affect the well-being of the individuals who experience them and their engagement with climate change solutions. The authors found that those “who felt more intense anger about climate change were more likely to take part in climate protests and switch to climate-friendly behaviours” and that they reported less stress, depression and anxiety. A later publication was more specifically concerned with anger, one of the more motivating emotions (Stanley et al. 2024). This study identified thirteen kinds of climate anger in Australian subjects, which were related to different targets. These targets ranged from inaction and lack of concern by leaders and other actors (the most common form) through climate denial and the slowness of climate action to the unfairness of expecting individual action in the face of corporat...
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Climate Storytelling

Climate scientists have great difficulty in making known the risks brought about by climate change. They face denial, scepticism and distrust in science in a world of misinformation and divisive politics (Woodley et al., 2022). Some of the difficulty comes from the scientific community itself, which tends to assume that providing scientific information “will necessarily lead to desired behavioural changes” and is constrained by its own standards of “strict objectivity and political separation”. The authors of the paper argue that conventional communication methods put distance between scientists and their intended audiences and may “fail to generate inspiration and connectivity”. They believe that scientists should be willing to “radically adapt their communication strategies” and they discuss three relevant factors. First, they examine the problems of communicating climate change risks arising from the inherent difficulties of the subject, the activities of vested interests and lobb...
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Dragons and Denial

According to the Emissions Gap Report 2024 from the United Nations Environment Programme the world is on track for a global temperature rise of 2.6-2.8°C this century, and without improved policies “we are heading for a temperature rise of 3.1°C” (Andersen, 2024). Comment on the UNEP report referred to a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature , to greenhouse gas emissions which rose last year “by 1.3 percent over 2022 marks” and to the need for a “six-fold increase in mitigation investment” in order to achieve net zero (Musto, 2024). Our failure to take adequate action will be explored in this post using three sources. The first is “ The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation ” which is mainly concerned with the different types of restraint on individual action (Gifford, 2011). The second is the more recent paper “Understanding and Countering the Motivated Roots of Climate Change Denial” which builds on Gifford’s psychology of ina...
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Carbon Capture and Net Zero

In early October a press release from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirmed that the UK government had made “up to £21.7 billion of funding available, over 25 years, to make the UK an early leader in 2 growing global sectors, CCUS and hydrogen” (DESNZ, 2024). The article was headed “Government reignites industrial heartlands 10 days out from the International Investment Summit”: the heartlands are in the Northwest and Northeast of England, centred on sites in Teesside and Merseyside, and the summit aims to drive UK economic growth by attracting private sector investment. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is seen by many as “a critical tool in decarbonisation” and is “expected to support 50,000 good, skilled jobs as the sector matures in the 2030s”. The funding “will also help turbocharge the low carbon hydrogen sector by paving the way for the UK’s first large-scale hydrogen production plant, decarbonising vital industrial sectors.” CCUS and hydrogen ar...
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UK climate change policy

A critique of the climate policy in the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto lists a range of positive aims, but also points to the absence of some “essential policies that must be pushed forwards in the next parliament” (Big Issue, 2024). Among the positive aims are expanding nature-rich habitats “as part of moving to a circular economy ”, ending pollution of our rivers and seas through a range of sanctions on failing water firms, and reclaiming the UK’s “global climate and nature leadership role via an international Clean Power Alliance”. Fracking would be banned, there would be a new windfall tax on oil and gas companies , and a just transition to a clean energy future. Notably absent are any announcements to “revoke existing oil and gas licences, like Rosebank, and to end outrageous fossil fuel subsidies ”. While FTSE 100 companies will be required to “implement transition plans that align with the Paris Agreement” there appears to be no obligation on the government to have a “credible 1....
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Adapting to climate change

The previous post addressed the topic of sea level rise with a focus on a single area of southwest England. This post looks at a wider range of climate adaptation issues which may affect all the UK. Greenpeace (2024) lists present-day effects of climate change such as heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, spells of unusually cold weather, sea level rise and coastal erosion, loss of species’ habitats and threats of extinction. It predicts that future floods in the UK “could impact two or three million people across the country if temperatures reach 2 ° C or 3 ° C above pre-industrial levels”, and notes that despite this, “thousands of new homes are still being built within high-risk flood zones, and thousands of flood defences are in poor condition.” A detailed approach to climate change adaptation is provided by Hodgkin and Rutter (2024), who begin with climate change as an existing problem for the world, citing wildfires in Canada, flooding in Libya, and drought which reduced shipping...
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Future sea levels

In an address to the UN Security Council, Secretary-General António Guterres described the phenomenon of sea level rise as a “threat multiplier” which jeopardizes access to water, food and healthcare. He also referred to the potential damage to agriculture, fisheries and tourism, and to infrastructure, such as transportation systems, hospitals and schools, and to the possibility of the “mass exodus of entire populations”. He warned that “under any temperature rise scenario, countries from Bangladesh to China, India and the Netherlands will all be at risk” ( UN News, 2023 ). This post will focus on the risk to a single UK region, but some of the resources cited will be of much more general interest. Climate Central describes itself as “an independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives.” Its work is organised into several programs, one of which is Sea Level Rise, which aims to provide accu...
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