his short report was compiled from a collective intelligence gathering of World in 2050’s (W2050) Senior Fellows (Climate Change & Energy Transition Committee). The meeting took place under the Chatham House Rule, so specific ideas will not be directly attributed to any specific Fellow. W2050 Senior Fellows attending the committee meeting were: Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari, Erin Billeri, Duane Dickson, Kristen Nuttal, and Charlie Ursell. Also present were W2050 Executive Director Dr. Shane C. Szarkowski and Editor Jeremy Fugleberg.
We now have a general consensus that climate change action is necessary. We also have access to a lot of research that tells us what needs to be done. Yet that hasn’t ushered in the hoped–for era of meaningful action, leading instead to a period when rhetoric on climate change action is often confusing and counterproductive. Members of W2050’s Senior Fellows Committee on Climate Change and the Energy Transition met in March to discuss why this gap between knowledge and action persists, and what might be done to bridge that gap.
The rhetoric–regulation divide
The existence of a gap between rhetoric and action on climate change is nothing new. Most of the conversations about this gap have been primarily interested in asking why action isn’t meeting the demands of rhetoric. This ignores the damage that rhetoric can do. For instance, the UN is regularly criticized for perceived failures of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of Parties (COP) summits to live up to expectations. Yet at least part of the gap here is explained by popular misunderstandings of the capacities and even the purpose of COP. The COP summits are forward looking and most of the meaningful ideas being discussed are very early stage, so impacts won’t be immediate. These are system–level changes that take time. In the interim, it is the responsibility of governments and the private sector to take more immediate meaningful measures.
These perceived failures harm the ability of our multinational institutions to work. Part of that is the effect of declining trust in our institutions—they require trust just as much as they require accountability to work properly. But a poorly recognized impact of these rhetoric–driven perceptions of failure is that it allows a certain amount of blame shifting. If the lack of climate action is because of the failure of international institutions, then national governments and private sector leaders have a much easier time avoiding blame if they drag their feet on climate action.
Rhetoric does not always derail climate action, however. In spaces where there is significant, shared lived experience of climate change impacts, rhetoric can shift and become more aligned with meaningful climate action. Atmospheric rivers wreaked havoc on stretches of British Columbia, Canada, earlier this year. The government was able to act quickly and meaningfully in the aftermath by surveying local Indigenous communities about their perceptions of what was needed to create more regional resilience against the impacts of climate change. Lived experience may work very well for triggering well-informed climate rhetoric, but it is not a silver bullet. By nature, it is more reactive than proactive: people must suffer before rhetoric aligns with action needs. There is also the danger that the most vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to be those with the least access to tools to share their experience with others in a meaningful way..
When well informed, climate rhetoric can be a powerful force for meaningful climate action beyond regulation, as well. Social pressure—and a subset of social pressure, social sanctioning—can create informal systems of accountability that encourage more climate conscious behavior.
Social pressure as self–regulation
Social pressure—and similarly, social sanctioning—is an important part of how individuals conceptualize their response to climate change. It is a powerful yet complicated tool, often peer, internal and celebrity driven, but with concerning ramifications for institutions working to mitigate climate change. Social pressure can fill in the gaps left by slow-moving institutions but it can also undercut them by highlighting their failures.
For instance, consider Tesla electric vehicles, plastic straws, and second–hand fashion. While many buy electric vehicles such as Teslas for environmental reasons, others seek them as brand–conscious consumers because ownership indicates social status. Ironically, those best positioned to reduce their carbon footprints are the most insulated from the effects of climate change and yet have the luxury to indulge in virtue signaling in the context of social pressure and sanctioning. Similarly, plastic straws have garnered widespread opposition (social sanctioning) due to the perception they are frivolous pollution. In some parts of the world, it’s considered a faux pas to even request them in a restaurant, despite real evidence that reduction in the use of plastic straws may not have meaningful impacts at scale. Bans on plastic straws haven’t even been particularly effective in any case, given that informal economies have sprung up to meet persisting demand. While social pressure may appear to be a grassroots phenomenon, it is frequently the result of spurts of activism by influencers and brands. Such activism has, for example, fueled the market growth for second-hand fashion. Similar to Teslas, it has become fashionable to be climate-conscious and as in the case of second–hand action this can show great promise, but too often these trends are not well informed.
While it may seem that any coordinated action would be beneficial from a climate change perspective, there are significant downsides to the rise in social pressure as currently experienced. Since they are often powered by fads and trends, they by definition do not lead to sustained action. Furthermore, the more frivolous examples of social pressure can and have produced backlashes, powering informal economies and animus toward large-scale institutional changes, such as ESG initiatives. It also allows actors to virtue signal without real commitment by following often technology centric solutionism fads. This animus is fueled by, and further fuels, growing public distrust of institutions—which in turn makes it harder for those institutions to do their jobs.
Priorities for achieving meaningful climate action
Climate literacy to inform, sustain social pressure: Systematically cultivating climate literacy can maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative potential effects of social pressure. Rhetoric informed by climate literacy makes meaningful climate action more likely, both on the policy level and on an informal level. Climate literacy also makes us less likely to be taken in by ill–considered, trendy rhetoric.
Recalibrate public expectations of multinational institutions: Our climate facing multilateral institutions have the remit to do deep analysis on climate action, to educate global publics and leaders on the need for systemic change, and to facilitate dialogue among public and private sector stakeholders. Recognizing this reduces our reliance on institutions for climate action. They are powerful but slow, so we should be glad for what they can do, but look elsewhere—like the government and the private sector—for sustained action.
Incremental, non–legislative changes to regulatory authority: The influence of social pressure and sanctioning and the efficacy of lived experience in empowering meaningful climate action illustrate the power of smaller, non–legislative solutions that tweak regulation in meaningful ways. For example, emergency management plans could be tweaked to require unified command centers which have fully inclusive representation of groups under their remit.
Reframing climate finance for the Global South: Rhetoric on climate finance to the Global South has largely been about ethics. While legitimate, this misses two key issues. First is the security aspect—climate impacts create greater disruption and regional security risks when sufficient adaptation measures aren’t in place. Second is the need to ensure sufficient financing is spent on building up institutional capacity to effectively use aid for adaptation measures, a capacity that is currently missing in much of the Global South.
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Translating climate rhetoric into meaningful climate action
April 17, 2024
World in 2050 Senior Fellows met in a collective intelligence gathering, where they discussed the gap between climate knowledge and action—and how to bridge it.
T
his short report was compiled from a collective intelligence gathering of World in 2050’s (W2050) Senior Fellows (Climate Change & Energy Transition Committee). The meeting took place under the Chatham House Rule, so specific ideas will not be directly attributed to any specific Fellow. W2050 Senior Fellows attending the committee meeting were: Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari, Erin Billeri, Duane Dickson, Kristen Nuttal, and Charlie Ursell. Also present were W2050 Executive Director Dr. Shane C. Szarkowski and Editor Jeremy Fugleberg.
We now have a general consensus that climate change action is necessary. We also have access to a lot of research that tells us what needs to be done. Yet that hasn’t ushered in the hoped–for era of meaningful action, leading instead to a period when rhetoric on climate change action is often confusing and counterproductive. Members of W2050’s Senior Fellows Committee on Climate Change and the Energy Transition met in March to discuss why this gap between knowledge and action persists, and what might be done to bridge that gap.
The rhetoric–regulation divide
The existence of a gap between rhetoric and action on climate change is nothing new. Most of the conversations about this gap have been primarily interested in asking why action isn’t meeting the demands of rhetoric. This ignores the damage that rhetoric can do. For instance, the UN is regularly criticized for perceived failures of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of Parties (COP) summits to live up to expectations. Yet at least part of the gap here is explained by popular misunderstandings of the capacities and even the purpose of COP. The COP summits are forward looking and most of the meaningful ideas being discussed are very early stage, so impacts won’t be immediate. These are system–level changes that take time. In the interim, it is the responsibility of governments and the private sector to take more immediate meaningful measures.
These perceived failures harm the ability of our multinational institutions to work. Part of that is the effect of declining trust in our institutions—they require trust just as much as they require accountability to work properly. But a poorly recognized impact of these rhetoric–driven perceptions of failure is that it allows a certain amount of blame shifting. If the lack of climate action is because of the failure of international institutions, then national governments and private sector leaders have a much easier time avoiding blame if they drag their feet on climate action.
Rhetoric does not always derail climate action, however. In spaces where there is significant, shared lived experience of climate change impacts, rhetoric can shift and become more aligned with meaningful climate action. Atmospheric rivers wreaked havoc on stretches of British Columbia, Canada, earlier this year. The government was able to act quickly and meaningfully in the aftermath by surveying local Indigenous communities about their perceptions of what was needed to create more regional resilience against the impacts of climate change. Lived experience may work very well for triggering well-informed climate rhetoric, but it is not a silver bullet. By nature, it is more reactive than proactive: people must suffer before rhetoric aligns with action needs. There is also the danger that the most vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to be those with the least access to tools to share their experience with others in a meaningful way..
When well informed, climate rhetoric can be a powerful force for meaningful climate action beyond regulation, as well. Social pressure—and a subset of social pressure, social sanctioning—can create informal systems of accountability that encourage more climate conscious behavior.
Social pressure as self–regulation
Social pressure—and similarly, social sanctioning—is an important part of how individuals conceptualize their response to climate change. It is a powerful yet complicated tool, often peer, internal and celebrity driven, but with concerning ramifications for institutions working to mitigate climate change. Social pressure can fill in the gaps left by slow-moving institutions but it can also undercut them by highlighting their failures.
For instance, consider Tesla electric vehicles, plastic straws, and second–hand fashion. While many buy electric vehicles such as Teslas for environmental reasons, others seek them as brand–conscious consumers because ownership indicates social status. Ironically, those best positioned to reduce their carbon footprints are the most insulated from the effects of climate change and yet have the luxury to indulge in virtue signaling in the context of social pressure and sanctioning. Similarly, plastic straws have garnered widespread opposition (social sanctioning) due to the perception they are frivolous pollution. In some parts of the world, it’s considered a faux pas to even request them in a restaurant, despite real evidence that reduction in the use of plastic straws may not have meaningful impacts at scale. Bans on plastic straws haven’t even been particularly effective in any case, given that informal economies have sprung up to meet persisting demand. While social pressure may appear to be a grassroots phenomenon, it is frequently the result of spurts of activism by influencers and brands. Such activism has, for example, fueled the market growth for second-hand fashion. Similar to Teslas, it has become fashionable to be climate-conscious and as in the case of second–hand action this can show great promise, but too often these trends are not well informed.
While it may seem that any coordinated action would be beneficial from a climate change perspective, there are significant downsides to the rise in social pressure as currently experienced. Since they are often powered by fads and trends, they by definition do not lead to sustained action. Furthermore, the more frivolous examples of social pressure can and have produced backlashes, powering informal economies and animus toward large-scale institutional changes, such as ESG initiatives. It also allows actors to virtue signal without real commitment by following often technology centric solutionism fads. This animus is fueled by, and further fuels, growing public distrust of institutions—which in turn makes it harder for those institutions to do their jobs.
Priorities for achieving meaningful climate action
Climate literacy to inform, sustain social pressure: Systematically cultivating climate literacy can maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative potential effects of social pressure. Rhetoric informed by climate literacy makes meaningful climate action more likely, both on the policy level and on an informal level. Climate literacy also makes us less likely to be taken in by ill–considered, trendy rhetoric.
Recalibrate public expectations of multinational institutions: Our climate facing multilateral institutions have the remit to do deep analysis on climate action, to educate global publics and leaders on the need for systemic change, and to facilitate dialogue among public and private sector stakeholders. Recognizing this reduces our reliance on institutions for climate action. They are powerful but slow, so we should be glad for what they can do, but look elsewhere—like the government and the private sector—for sustained action.
Incremental, non–legislative changes to regulatory authority: The influence of social pressure and sanctioning and the efficacy of lived experience in empowering meaningful climate action illustrate the power of smaller, non–legislative solutions that tweak regulation in meaningful ways. For example, emergency management plans could be tweaked to require unified command centers which have fully inclusive representation of groups under their remit.
Reframing climate finance for the Global South: Rhetoric on climate finance to the Global South has largely been about ethics. While legitimate, this misses two key issues. First is the security aspect—climate impacts create greater disruption and regional security risks when sufficient adaptation measures aren’t in place. Second is the need to ensure sufficient financing is spent on building up institutional capacity to effectively use aid for adaptation measures, a capacity that is currently missing in much of the Global South.
