I often use Twitter as a way to record thoughts or flag interesting climate developments. But, inspired by Ed King's excellent digest on climate diplomacy updates, and encouraged by anecdotal appetite for something similar focussed on the UK, I thought I'd put together an occasional note that goes beyond 280 characters and tries to connect the dots between what's going on here in the run up to COP26.
This is brilliant Joss. My 2 thoughts on how to prevent backlash or culture wars, are to get more non 'climate' organisations to lead the campaigns/initiatives, and to create greater local ownership of the assets, not just participation in the process...I also worry a carbon tax is just asking for trouble without very careful design and communication, which are two things the government is not showing expertise in at the moment!
Great piece - completely agree that concern about climate change spans the various social, economic and cultural constituencies in the UK. So the issue is not concern but rather other aspects of opinion on climate change and climate policy. The best recent analysis I have seen on this is from some academics from the UK and New Zealand, based on a 2018 survey - free to view at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/250600992.pdf. They identify five groups amongst the UK public in terms of views on climate change, concluding that: "The two largest publics have strong beliefs that climate change is occurring, but view it as a low salience issue, or are wary of government action to address it." I guess this further supports the evidence you cite, and reinforces your point that the key issue now is engaging more seriously and opening up the discussion about the extent of the change needed in energy systems and the economy. My question is how we do this - while the Citizen's Assembly in climate was great, I fear it did not engage the vast majority of people.
So you can go straight from gas central heating to full heat pump. Yes it's expensive (10-30K) but there's an interim solution widely used in the Netherlands - to existing gas central heating boilers add a hybrid air heat pump (cost E3-4K) that does the majority of the heating except in a few weeks of the year when the outside air temp is well below 5C. No need to change the whole heating system or have really high insulation. Approx 80% reduction in gas use. In 10 years (average life time of a gas boiler) air source heat pump upgrade will be cheaper and widely adopted.
Great article, esp. on culture wars. On taxes, I was in a meeting with others just recently where a number of us were saying that the most important thing for the forthcoming Budget is get message to not f**k it up and tread slowly and carefully.
Great article. It's worth noting that car free and reduced traffic zones were strongly attacked in Dutch cities in the 70's, and in Walthamstow more recently; now they are popular and almost universally accepted. Council's need to give their new schemes time.
On tax raising, careful messaging and targeting can help. E.g., a frequent flyer tax which targets those who take five or more flights per year. This instantly avoids most of the population. Couple that with the figures about the vast amount of pollution caused by the 1%, much of it through flying, and you might get broad support.
More about climate change and resource use needs to be communicated by government. And there will need to be serious investment. Decarbonizing the heating of existing housing stock is a huge problem. I'm not even sure if we really have the technology yet, at least not without huge increases in bills. Biogas? I'm stuck. But we do need rapid action. Simply reminding people that gas is a fossil fuel and fossil fuels are bad is a start.
This is brilliant Joss. My 2 thoughts on how to prevent backlash or culture wars, are to get more non 'climate' organisations to lead the campaigns/initiatives, and to create greater local ownership of the assets, not just participation in the process...I also worry a carbon tax is just asking for trouble without very careful design and communication, which are two things the government is not showing expertise in at the moment!
Great piece - completely agree that concern about climate change spans the various social, economic and cultural constituencies in the UK. So the issue is not concern but rather other aspects of opinion on climate change and climate policy. The best recent analysis I have seen on this is from some academics from the UK and New Zealand, based on a 2018 survey - free to view at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/250600992.pdf. They identify five groups amongst the UK public in terms of views on climate change, concluding that: "The two largest publics have strong beliefs that climate change is occurring, but view it as a low salience issue, or are wary of government action to address it." I guess this further supports the evidence you cite, and reinforces your point that the key issue now is engaging more seriously and opening up the discussion about the extent of the change needed in energy systems and the economy. My question is how we do this - while the Citizen's Assembly in climate was great, I fear it did not engage the vast majority of people.
So you can go straight from gas central heating to full heat pump. Yes it's expensive (10-30K) but there's an interim solution widely used in the Netherlands - to existing gas central heating boilers add a hybrid air heat pump (cost E3-4K) that does the majority of the heating except in a few weeks of the year when the outside air temp is well below 5C. No need to change the whole heating system or have really high insulation. Approx 80% reduction in gas use. In 10 years (average life time of a gas boiler) air source heat pump upgrade will be cheaper and widely adopted.
Great article, esp. on culture wars. On taxes, I was in a meeting with others just recently where a number of us were saying that the most important thing for the forthcoming Budget is get message to not f**k it up and tread slowly and carefully.
Great article. It's worth noting that car free and reduced traffic zones were strongly attacked in Dutch cities in the 70's, and in Walthamstow more recently; now they are popular and almost universally accepted. Council's need to give their new schemes time.
On tax raising, careful messaging and targeting can help. E.g., a frequent flyer tax which targets those who take five or more flights per year. This instantly avoids most of the population. Couple that with the figures about the vast amount of pollution caused by the 1%, much of it through flying, and you might get broad support.
More about climate change and resource use needs to be communicated by government. And there will need to be serious investment. Decarbonizing the heating of existing housing stock is a huge problem. I'm not even sure if we really have the technology yet, at least not without huge increases in bills. Biogas? I'm stuck. But we do need rapid action. Simply reminding people that gas is a fossil fuel and fossil fuels are bad is a start.