dana centre - event - Climate (Mis)behaviour

Rescuing the planet requires behavioural change on an unprecedented scale. From individual action to global politics, what are the different strategies attempting to achieve this? Social psychology, advertising, policy and direct action are all thrown into the mix in this debate.

This event is trying out a new format called Policy Slam, which is funded by the Democratic Innovation Fund of the Ministry of Justice. With the help of the experts, you will discuss, present and vote on several different options.

Speakers:

Solitaire Townsend, Chief Executive and co-founder, Futerra Communications
Tina Fawcett, Environmental Change Institute
Bill Gunyon, Editor, OneWorld Guides
Tamsin Osmond, Climate Rush

Facilitators:
Alison Conboy, climate change project, Science Museum
Perry Walker, Head, Democracy and Participation, the new economics foundation

This event is organised by: The Science Museum

Which strategies would be most effective in creating the behavioural changes necessary to reduce climate change?

comments

Kat said:

NON-SELFISHNESS

Dean Bubley said:

1. Population control and reduction. If we introduce personal carbon budgets, parents choice to have children must be included.

2. Continued education in science, to reduce irrational fears of nuclear energy

3. Strong advocacy of capitalist approaches to environmentalism, eg investment in new technology. Changing peoples' behaviour AND their ideology is both unrealistic and undesirable. We've had too many duplicitous quasi-political groups masquerading as environmental NGOs - people are rightly cynical.

4. Bin the guilt-trips and hideously misanthropic word "sustainability" and instead encourage people to accept "temporary inconvenience" while we work through the engineering difficulties involved in maintaining peoples' current behaviour and expectations.

Hywel Owen said:

Fred Hoyle got it right when he said that if there was any great benefit from saving energy, we would be doing it already. Personal behavioural change, like turning off your phone charger, is tinkering at the edges and has no real effect other than propaganda awareness raising. It won't in itself 'save the planet'.

What we need is clean, cheap, secure electricity, and lots more than we currently make (40 GW in the UK) so we can replace all the stuff we burn to make trucks move and heat our houses. We need 140 GW. Wind/wave/solar can't give that capacity. Coal and oil are too dirty. Nuclear is the *only* option to keep the lights on. Get used to it.

Elizabeth Terrazas said:

Changing personal behavior is essential to "sustainability" but we move beyond sustaining to Visioning and Creating a Positive Footprint on each other and not just watching our energy consumption, but our consumption of damaging behavior with each other. What is the foot print we leave on each other that betters our fundamental experience of life? in relationship to our environment, our community, to our families and friends?

Simplification runs amok with industry and governments. Expand the concept to Reward Innovation and Contribution and we are on the way. No nutshell in being kind to each other, but to be accountable on an individual basis for our behaviour is essential.

Is it a Butterfly Effect? A ripple in the pond? Go back to Mathematics and the symmetry of Nature. Every element creates a whole.

Choosing action on an individual basis to become informed and that Action is Change on a daily basis creates a difference. Plant a tree. Yes, climb a tree. Yes and One on One matters. Sustainability is to sustain ourselves in our lives and each other one person at a time.

I just don't think we're here to look the other way. Expand Sustainability toward Theology and Philosophy powers it up.