Last night, BBC2's Newsnight broadcast a very interesting analysis of public attitudes towards how best to confront climate change. For those that didn't see it (you should still be able to view it at this link), the programme organised a focus group of 30 people - an 'equal mix of believers and skeptics', according to the reporter - to be gathered together in a room. Then the US pollster Frank Luntz showed the group video clips of a range of different people - Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Richard Branson, Prince Charles, Plane Stupid's Joss Garman, Sienna Miller and David Attenborough - each speaking about the need, and ways, to tackle climate change. Each member of the focus group had a clever little dial in their hand which they had to twist left or right to score the clip they were watching with either a positive or negative rating.
A little predictably, the politicians got very low ratings. Only a small handful of people believed that the politicians were sincere when they spoke about what needs to be done about climate change. They were also largely indifferent to Garman talking about how climate change is 'causing thousands of deaths in Africa' (some said he was being overly emotive, or lacked proof), as they were to 'hypocritical' celebrities such as Miller. There was a little less negativity towards Branson talking about how he intends to fund the development of technological solutions to climate change. But, surprisingly, Prince Charles proved very popular - even more so than Attenborough who is generally seen as a demi-god by most people. The reason given by the majority was that Prince Charles could be believed because he was apolitical and also had a long track record of talking about the environment.
There was plenty of heated debate among the focus group members as Frank Luntz teased them with questions (a little clumsily at times, I thought, as he sometimes seemed to imply answers within his questioning) about what they were personally prepared to do, or accept have imposed on them, in the name of tackling climate change. At the end Luntz said that climate change now produces the most emotive, entrenched and passionate focus group discussions out of all the subjects he polls on, including immigration and law and order.
What surprised me most though - yes, it was only 30 'random' people in a room - was how many of them acknowledged that they were concerned about climate change. The disagreement in the room lay less in whether climate change was manmade or not, but rather what, if anything, should be done about it. It suggested to me that, at last, we might be moving beyond the 'is it real or not' phase that has dominated most discussion on the subject for the past decade or more, and are now moving onto the much more important debate about what should be done about it.
There was an equally interesting discussion afterwards between Jeremy Paxman and the Liberal Democrat's environment spokesman Chris Huhne. Huhne said that public attitudes are likely to move very fast on climate change once this country experiences a climate-change 'event' of significant enough proportions. To support his claim, he cited Canada's recent shift in public attitudes on climate change after it failed to get much snowfall last winter and Australia's shift following its recent drought. He said, though, that the floods this summer in the UK hadn't been a significant enough event to move the UK public.
It left a major question unanswered for me: what would be a significant enough event - weather-related or otherwise - to dramatically alter the public perception in the UK about climate change? I've asked some people this question myself - including government officials off the record - and many say that, to be blunt and realistic, it will take the "deaths of a large number of white, middle class people". That's why 9/11 shook America to its very core, whereas Hurricane Katrina by and large didn't, they point out. "Now, if Katrina had struck New York or Washington DC..."
Yes, I know that we can't blame individual weather events on climate change, but that doesn't change the fact that big enough events do obviously have the potential to change people's attitudes. But if a flood that caused billions of pounds worth of damage across the UK, and left thousands homeless, is not enough, then what is?
