Success of UK Media Campaign on Climate Change, Solitaire Townsend (Futerra)

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”, Mahatma Gandhi

I think we are between fighting and winning.

Just today the British Government has published a bill in which they a proposing to set a mandatory cap on emissions that the government would be legally responsible for.

This is now an electoral issue and people are fighting for the “green vote”.

One of the problems here is that this is such a complex issue to talk about.

In the UK there is a body called the Carbon Trust whose job is to communicate climate change to businesses.

We don’t want to convey the idea that this is a huge issue that is so big that none of us can do anything about. Instead, you want to make sure that people understand that the individual can make a difference.

The Energy Savings Trust is the sister organization to the Carbon Trust with the job of educating consumers.

The British government developed and funded an entire media campaign including educational advertisement broadcast on TV.

A lot of NGOs are torn between political campaigns (to get governments to change) and personal change (to get people to change their actions). Climate change isn’t like some other campaigns — all of us have personal responsibility because it isn’t something where you can just demand that the government make a change.

Who are we talking to with these campaigns:

• Settlers: Very inward looking (my home, my environment, sustanence driven, “Yesterday was better”)
• Pioneers: Also inward directing, but forward looking. Got bored by recycling and have moved on to compacting and burning their waste.
• Prospectors: They get their sense of self from what other people think of them. They are very “in the now” and focused on fashion, status, success. For example, you saw this with “fair trade” coffees when people started buying fair trade products even when they had no idea what it was.

Messages that pioneers will respond to will totally turn off the prospectors. This is very dangerous because you need to make sure you are targeting the right message to the right audience. If you are a pioneer, and you hate a message, it is probably exactly right for the prospector.

In addition, the two groups pay attention to very different media. If you want to reach the prospectors, advertise around “America’s Top Model”.

There was a recent poll in of UK residents that asked, “Do you agree or disagree that the world’s climate is changing?”. 97% said yes and 3% said no. That’s great news! We are winning that battle.

However, the survey then when on to ask how large an influence people thought various groups had on changing this issue. 50% believe that industry and business can have a large influence, but only 7% believe that they can, personally, can have a large influence.

This is a really big challenge.

In order to do this, we need to convince people that they can have an impact. How do we market to these folks and impact change?

• Go beyond the usual suspects.The pioneers already have the right information. We have to start talking to the prospectors.
• Change groups, not people.We learn what is publicly acceptable by what is around us. People like publicly visible activities because other people can see it.We are working on a big blue plaque that you can get outside of your house if your house is “certified” as energy efficient.
• Empathy and imagination are power tools.I am sick of people in this movement using the picture of melting icebergs to make their case. People don’t empathize with ice. We empathize with things with faces. We need to find things with faces that are “victims of climate change”. While it is intellectually shocking to see ice melting, it is emotionally shocking to see the impact on people.
• The language of climate change has become so hyperbolic, it puts people in “audience mentality”. What we have to do is raise the language of the solutions. We often try to make things seem easier simpler and cheaper than they really are. We often say, “We’re all going to die, unless we change a lightbulb.” The two just don’t match. I don’t think we need to change the description of the problem. Instead, we need to change the solution to come in line with the problem.
• We have to be very careful about how you ask for things because for many things, people’s initial reaction is “no”. Don’t push people so far that they say no. Once they say “no”, it is very difficult to get them to come back.
• Climate change is suffering from the biggest “bystander effect” we’ve ever seen.
• Since the 1950’s, people have been trying to reduce the amount of time that they spend doing chores. This means that even if we get some of the activities on the chore list, it won’t get done. On the other hand, if we can get things on the pleasure, leisure and fulfillment list, it is likely to get done.How can we change activities from chores to a pleasure? For example, the Carbon Trust built a game based on Space Invaders and used this with businesses to educate them on energy efficiency. We saw a tangible, measurable energy savings impact based on this. It took a chore and made it fun.

Energy for a Changing World: New Developments in Europe’s Enegry Policy, Helen Donoghue (European Commission)

JUst last week, the EU made a unilateral commitment to reduce the emissions from 1990
levels by 20% by 2020. No contingencies.

We must have a comprehensive global climate agreement post 2012. We are not going to be able to deal with these issues without it including absolute reductions in greenhouse gases.

We regard a global carbon market as an extremely useful tool.

Three objectives for our energy strategy:

• Climate. We have a real target that we have to aim for.
• Security of supply. There is a limit on how much risk can be accepted for our energy.
• Competitiveness. We need to ensure that prices are reasonable for businesses.

The interesting discussion will be as we move to allocate out the targets on a per-country state. Austria, for example, has a high supply of hydroelectricity available.2020 Targets:

• 20% Energy Savings
• 20% renewables in energy consumption
• 10% biofuelds in gas/diesel

We have a directive on energy performance of buildings. It is up to the member states to set the specific thresholds, but we could be looking at minimum performance requirements for the EU as a whole.

How Germany and Denmark became World Leaders, Bill Moomaw (Tufts University)

Germany leads the world in renewable energy in 2006:

• They are first in installed wind capacity (20,000 MW, creating 6% of total electricity — some states have over 20% in wind power
• They are first in installed solar PV (2,000 MW)
• They have about 6,300 MW in solar thermal
• Biogas provides about 1% of electic power.
• Overall Germany about 71.5 Twh (or 11.5%) of its electricity coming from renewable sources.

The growth in wind in Europe is largely driven by German, but Spain is #2. The U.S. is #3 Denmark is #4, even though Denmark has less population than Massachusetts.

In 1989, 90% of the wind capacity in the world was in California. Now, Germany has twice as much as all of the U.S.

What are the policies that have made this possible?

The “feed-in” law that assures anyone who installs a renewable energy source that they will be able to sell their energy at a high price for 20 years.

• For solar, it is $.75/kWh reducing by 5% / year.
• For wind it is $.11/kwh
• Similar prices for biogas and other renewables.

This gives you the assurance that you will get the money out of this if you invest in it.

In contrast, in the U.S., there is no predictability. Our policies change every two years and create a tremendous amount of uncertainty for anyone who is looking to build renewable energy sources.

Denmark is producing about 25% of its electricity from wind power.

They set long term fixed prices and a subsidies for renewables and required utilities to purchase renewable power.

They have a tax on CO2 and SO2 that biases things toward clean energy.

They established ownership rules that allowed farmers to form cooperatives that can band together to purchase a “shared” renewable energy source.

They have a renewable portfolio standard.

Up until a few years ago, over 60% of all of the turbines in the world were produced in Denmark. Remember, Denmark is smaller than Massachusetts. This is a huge economic source for Denmark.

Now wind is starting to move offshore because they are saturating their existing space.
Buuilding Codes:

Germany:

Building codes are set as performance / cubic meter and square meter and have been progressively tightened.

They set standards for energy supply (furnace/heater) that is based on primary fuels (e.g., oil). This means that you can’t practically use electric heating since it is so inefficient.
In Sweden, they went so far as stipulating the percentage of your walls that can be windows.

The last revision in 2001 was a 30% improvement over what they previously had. (This is about the difference between the Massachusetts code and Energy Star code).

The code also applies to renovations, not just new construction.

Moving to the point that every building has an “energy sticker” that rates the efficiency of the house.

Q&A Session

• Do the UK standards include the “total lifecycle costs” of energy?Yes, for any major project, people need to do an impact assessment and that has to take into account all of the effects of an energy system.
• How can you convince people to pay attention to global warming when the effects are so far in the future?Future discounting — the psychological effect where people devalue the effect of issues that are far out in the future — sucks. Because of that, we have stopped talking about the impacts of global warming on your children or the children of your children. We don’t talk about the future anymore. We talk about now. We need to focus on issues that people can understand and touch within the next 10 years. That is about as far as people can imagine.

  At the same time, you can use future discounting to your advantage. Just as people will discount the costs of inaction in the future, they will also discount the costs of action in the future. This means it is easier to get people on board now for something whose real cost doesn’t come into effect for a while.

• How do you get people to pay attention to the issue of “peak oil”?You can only be famous for one thing. Because of that, I don’t tend to use “peak oil” in our messaging. I know that I only have a tiny amount of people’s attention, so I can only focus on a very small set of issues. Otherwise it distracts from the message.

  Therefore, I generally don’t raise the issue of peak oil. It’s a very Machiavellian decision, but you have to do it.

• How do you market to students to take action?Students are one of the most difficult groups to market to. They have a lot of things going on and it is very hard to get their attention.

  We try to focus on finding someone who is a leader or trend setter and working with that person to find things that they can do now. For example, engaging with the local community or businesses.

  You have to use these people to help change the “status” of behaviors. If you find “high status” people and get them to engage in these behaviors, you can help raise the perception of these activities by others.