Today saw the launch of a new climate change communication initiative – the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). Staffed by some familiar faces – including ex-BBC Environment Editor Richard Black and George Smeeton, formally of WWF, the Unit has an impressive (and impressively politically diverse) Advisory Board, including some senior Conservatives not typically considered part of the climate change crowd.
The initiative is very welcome, given that its remit is to “support journalists and other communicators with accurate and accessible briefings on key issues, and work with individuals and organisations that have interesting stories to tell, helping them connect to the national conversation (on climate change)”.
The ECIU marked its launch with the results of a survey commissioned to assess a particular type of climate change knowledge – what you could call people’s ‘social inferences’ about climate change. Many of the questions focused not only on what people themselves knew about climate and energy issues, but on what they thought other people (including scientists) knew about climate change (and whether they considered themselves well informed).
So, for example, we learned that 56% of the 2000 people surveyed felt well informed about climate change, and a similar number (54%) thought that ‘almost all’ or ‘a majority’ of scientists believed that climate change is mainly the result of human activities. A hefty 35% perceived scientists to be evenly split – an underestimation of the climate change consensus that mirrors similar findings with Australian and American samples.
It would be interesting to know whether this is the same people in the survey. Do the people who consider themselves well-informed perceive a consensus on climate change?
Only 36% felt well informed about energy bills (and how prices were set), and interestingly most people also tended to underestimate a different type of agreement: the level of social consensus around renewables.
Whereas surveys consistently show a large majority supporting technologies like solar and wind power, only 5% of the ECIU survey thought that public support for renewables was between 75–100%, which the ECIU describes as a ‘large misconception’. Similarly, most people surveyed (78%) think that up to half the population opposes renewables (when in fact, this number is much lower).
The questions are intriguing because they tell us something about what people think about what other people think. Although there is a slightly mind-melting level of meta-percentages going on here, the findings are striking: although most of us think climate change is happening and caused by humans, we underestimate the scientific consensus. And, while most of support renewables, we think that most other people don’t.
The findings support previous COIN research for the Climate Coalition, where we found that a range of audiences in focus group research rejected the idea that there was a ‘concerned majority’ in the UK on climate change (even though surveys suggest there actually is!) The ‘dissociation’ between our actual beliefs and our inferences about what others believe is potentially hugely important, as it suggests that there is a fog of reticence and ambiguity hanging over public discourse that comes from wonky analyses of what others think, rather than our own personal views.
Perhaps because we so seldom talk about climate change, and it has such a narrow social reality, we can happily go about our business broadly accepting the argument that climate change is happening and renewables are part of the answer, while assuming that no-one else does.
The longer climate change hides in the cultural shadows, the more likely it is this kind of misconception will flourish (which, after all, is not based on a lack of knowledge per se but a lack of social cues and signals telling us what other people think).