The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Behaviour change ~ Why no climate change culture war?
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Caspar Milquetoast from their Walter Mitty.
In a week where Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged Kermit the Frog’s assertion that “it’s not easy being green”, we look at environmental messaging following a fascinating datablog about climate change and the culture wars. How can environmental campaigners secure their advantage?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the proverbial Swampy tunnelling under our Weekly A Road. Today’s attic closes the argument on the linguistic tick which infuriates both sides: is it this weekend or next weekend?
Talking about climate change
A recent article by analyst Steve Akehurst explores attitudes to the environment – finding that there is remarkable agreement across age and class groups. Why, Akehurst ponders, is climate change not a culture war issue?
Some of the answers he comes up with are fascinating. One factor touched upon is the political makeup of the traditional Conservative support. ‘Green welly Tories’, in essence, are a tribe which does not have an equivalent in car-loving America.
Akehurst’s core message, however, is about how you persuade people. As he puts it, “The messages which consistently perform best in UK message-testing all concern impacts, not solutions: extreme weather; the impacts on the next generation; the impact of climate change on nature.” He adds that “Narratives about jobs and economic transformation are useful for elites, but they perform comparatively less well with the public because they’re too abstract.”
His fear is that environmentalists do not learn the right lessons from their successes so far and take steps which alienate wider society.
This is worth mulling over, in a week where Insulate Britain activists have found themselves between the cross-hairs of the Mail and the Express, after they blocked the M25. In particular, footage of an altercation between a motorway café owner and one of the protesters suggested that the movement is not doing a great job of bringing others with it. A still from the video is shown above, and you can see the full exchange by clicking here.
Climate change is arguably the biggest threat which every government around the world faces. As the debate surrounding it evolves, it is worth considering Akehurst’s points about how groups at every level of society can campaign effectively.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the psycho-social aerosol sprayed into the ether each Friday:
Find out what the Medusa Effect is and why it matters in the age of Zoom.
See you this/ next weekend, depending on your age. Polling by YouGov finds a startling generational divide between what people call the coming weekend.
