scholarly journals Assembling a coalition of climate change narratives on UK climate action: a focus on the city, countryside, community and home

2021 ◽  
Vol 164 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Laurie Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Academic Policy ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The City

AbstractPerceptions of climate change and associated risks are complex and require greater consideration of the context in which behaviours are formed and changed. People tend to create their own stories of climate change providing an opportunity to capture personal experiences and frame solutions accordingly through narratives. Engagement with the issue can be further enhanced when using topics that resonate with individuals, especially through place attachments and local interests. Positioning climate change around communities, cities, homes and the countryside, for example, resonates with certain audiences as action at these scales provides useful narratives through which to engage audiences and increase positive associations with resilient and low-carbon futures. Nevertheless, we show how engagement with these narratives is complex and may overlap or contest in some cases. We present findings from thirty semi-structured interviews conducted with academic, policy and practitioner communities in the United Kingdom (UK) which explored what sub-themes could be utilised to engage audiences on climate change through narratives focused around cities, the countryside, communities and the home. We identify 10 sub-themes ranging from technological change (homes), connecting people (communities), alternative infrastructures (countryside) and positive visions of identity (cities). In search of a coherent coalition of diverse interests in shaping climate change action, we discuss two cross-cutting themes on technology and social norms which emerge strongly across each of the sub-themes.

scholarly journals A comparison of government communication of climate change in Hong Kong and United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma JS Ferranti ◽  
Joanna Ho Yan Wong ◽  
Surindar Dhesi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Practice Elements ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Different Characteristics

AbstractAs leaders of civil society, governments have a prime responsibility to communicate climate change information in order to motivate their citizens to mitigate and adapt. This study compares the approaches of the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong (HK) governments. Although different in size and population, the UK and HK have similar climate change agendas to communicate to similarly educated and prosperous populations. The study finds that whilst both governments use similar means: policy, education, campaigns, internet and social media, these have different characteristics, with different emphases in their climate change message. The UK’s top-down approach is more prominent in its legally binding policy and well-defined programmes for adaptation and risk assessment. HK has more effectively embedded climate change education across the school curricula, and has a more centralized and consistently branded campaign, with widespread use of visual language to connect the public to the problem. HK frames climate change as a science-society problem, and has a greater focus on self-responsibility and bottom-up behavioral change. Thus, the UK and HK governments have polarized approaches to motivating their citizens into climate action. Moving forwards, both governments should consider best practice elements of the other to develop their communication of climate change.

The Copenhagen Chiasm

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-26
Author(s):  
Frédéric Neyrat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Executive Director ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Crime Scene ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

“This evening, the city of Copenhagen is a crime scene, with those responsible fleeing for the airport.” It was in this manner that John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace for the United Kingdom, expressed himself following the Copenhagen summit on climate change.1 A crime? What sort of crime? What exactly happened during this summit? More than likely, no kind of event that would be capable of immediately changing the history of the world. But nevertheless, there was a noticeable turning point in relation to how societies were discussing the management of climate change; there was a revelatory moment in regard to what we have taken to calling the ...

scholarly journals Mapping Discourses of Climate Change Adaptation in the United Kingdom

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Cotton ◽  
Emma Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Q Methodology ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Qualitative Social Research ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Climate Action

Abstract The concept of adaptation is becoming part of mainstream public discourse on climate change. Yet the diversity, complexity, and novelty of the adaptation concept itself leads to interpretive flexibility, differing public understanding of (and engagement with) adaptation strategies, and hence differentiated policy responses. The boundary work of communicative practices and public understanding of the adaptation concept therefore requires empirical analysis in different cases and contexts. This study employs Q-methodology (a combined quantitative–qualitative social research method) to reveal the typologies of perspectives that emerge around the adaptation concept among a diverse group of citizen-stakeholders in the United Kingdom. Four such typologies are identified under the labels 1) top-down climate action, 2) collective action on climate change, 3) optimistic, values-focused adaptation, and 4) adaptation skepticism. The division between these perspectives reveals a perceived “responsibility gap” between the governmental–institutional and/or individual–community levels. Across the emergent discourses we find a consensual call for a multisector, multiscalar, and multistakeholder-led approach that posits adaptation as a contemporary, intragenerational problem, with a strong emphasis upon managing extreme weather events, and not as an abstract future problem. By attending to these public discourses in climate policy, this presents a potential means to lessen such a responsibility gap.

scholarly journals Climate effects on the onset of flowering in the United Kingdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Fox ◽  
Anna Maria Jönsson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Time Series ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Response Rates ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Extreme Weather Event ◽  
Negative Response ◽  
Wild Plant ◽  
Weather Event ◽  
The United Kingdom

Abstract Background A warmer climate has consequences for the timing of phenological events, as temperature is a key factor controlling plant development and flowering. In this study, we analyse the effects of the long-term climate change and an extreme weather event on the first flowering day (FFD) of five spring-flowering wild plant species in the United Kingdom. Citizen science data from the UK Woodland Trust were obtained for five species: Tussilago farfara (coltsfoot), Anemone nemorosa (wood anemone), Hyacinthoides non-scripta (bluebell), Cardamine pratensis (cuckooflower) and Alliaria petiolate (garlic mustard). Results Out of the 351 site-specific time series (≥ 15-years of FFD records), 74.6% showed significant negative response rates, i.e. earlier flowering in warmer years, ranging from − 5.6 to − 7.7 days °C−1. 23.7% of the series had non-significant negative response rates, and 1.7% had non-significant positive response rates. For cuckooflower, the response rate was increasingly more negative with decreasing latitudes. The winter of 2007 reflects an extreme weather event, about 2 °C warmer compared to 2006, where the 2006 winter temperatures were similar to the 1961–1990 baseline average. The FFD of each species was compared between 2006 and 2007. The results showed that the mean FFD of all species significantly advanced between 13 and 18 days during the extreme warmer winter of 2007, confirming that FFD is affected by temperature. Conclusion Given that all species in the study significantly respond to ambient near-surface temperatures, they are suitable as climate-change indicators. However, the responses to a + 2 °C warmer winter were both more and less pronounced than expected from an analysis of ≥ 15-year time series. This may reflect non-linear responses, species-specific thresholds and cumulative temperature effects. It also indicates that knowledge on extreme weather events is needed for detailed projections of potential climate change effects.

Roman Inscriptions in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

1976 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 28-43
Author(s):  
J. J. Wilkes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Small Collection ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The nineteen stones described below form a small collection of Latin inscriptions now housed in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. They have been acquired since the Second World War from older collections assembled at various places in the United Kingdom. With the exception of two, all are recorded as found in Rome and sixteen have been published in volume VI of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). The findspot of one (no. 6) is not recorded, while that of another (no. 13), although not attested, was almost certainly Rome. The publications in CIL were based in most cases on manuscript copies made between the fifteenth and ninetenth centuries; in the case of eight stones this republication (nos. 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17 and 18) provides corrections or amendments to the relevant entries in CIL. All measurements are metric.

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