The Role of Late-Night Infotainment Comedy in Communicating Climate Change Consensus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward John Roy Clarke ◽  
Anna Klas ◽  
Joshua Stevenson ◽  
Emily Jane Kothe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Mitigation Policy ◽  
Behavioural Intentions ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Adaptation Policies ◽  
Diverse Audience

Climate change is a politically-polarised issue, with conservatives less likely than liberals to perceive it as human-caused and consequential. Furthermore, they are less likely to support mitigation and adaptation policies needed to reduce its impacts. This study aimed to examine whether John Oliver’s “A Mathematically Representative Climate Change Debate” clip on his program Last Week Tonight polarised or depolarised a politically-diverse audience on climate policy support and behavioural intentions. One hundred and fifty-nine participants, recruited via Amazon MTurk (94 female, 64 male, one gender unspecified, Mage = 51.07, SDage = 16.35), were presented with either John Oliver’s climate change consensus clip, or a humorous video unrelated to climate change. Although the climate change consensus clip did not reduce polarisation (or increase it) relative to a control on mitigation policy support, it resulted in hyperpolarisation on support for adaptation policies and increased climate action intentions among liberals but not conservatives.

scholarly journals The Impact of Economic And National Identity Loss Messages, And The Moderating Effect of Political Orientation, On Climate Change Policy Support

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Klas ◽  
Edward J.R. C ◽  
Kelly Fielding ◽  
Matthew Mackay ◽  
Susanne Lohmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Economic Loss ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Australian Study ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Message Frame ◽  
Adaptation Policies

Abstract As climate change continues to be politically divisive, developing communications that align with right-leaning beliefs may increase bipartisan support for climate policy. In two experimental studies (Study 1, Australia, N = 558; Study 2, United States, N = 859), we tested whether an economic loss or national identity loss message would elicit greater support for mitigation and adaptation policies when compared to one another and to a control message. We also tested whether the direct effects of these message types were conditional on political orientation (specifically, identifying as politically right-leaning). In both studies, preliminary analyses indicated that the message manipulations were effective and that there was a high level of support for both types of climate policy. When compared to left-wing adherents, those who were politically right-leaning were less likely to support mitigation and adaptation policies in either sample. Australian (Study 1) identification – although not American identity (Study 2) – also uniquely predicted adaptation support (but not mitigation support). Yet, there were no significant message frame or interaction effects in the Australian (Study 1) or U.S. sample (Study 2). This suggests that neither an economic loss nor national identity loss message frame may be effective in overcoming the political polarization of climate change in Australia or the United States. Nevertheless, national identity could still play a useful role in Australian climate communications given its positive relationship to adaptation policy support, and therefore warrants further investigation.

scholarly journals The Politics of Climate Change Adaptation

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nives Dolšak ◽  
Aseem Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Disaster Management ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Adaptation Policies

Climate action has two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation faces collective action issues because its costs are focused on specific locations/actors but benefits are global and nonexcludable. Adaptation, in contrast, creates local benefits, and therefore should face fewer collective action issues. However, governance units vary in the types of adaptation policies they adopt. To explain this variation, we suggest conceptualizing adaptation-as-politics because adaptation speaks to the issues of power, conflicting policy preferences, resource allocation, and administrative tensions. In examining who develops and implements adaptation, we explore whether adaptation is the old wine of disaster management in the new bottle of climate policy, and the tensions between national and local policy making. In exploring what adaptation policies are adopted, we discuss maladaptation and the distinction between hard and soft infrastructure. Finally, we examine why politicians favor visible, hard adaptation over soft adaptation, and how international influences shape local policy.

scholarly journals What Drives Climate Action in Canada’s Provincial North? Exploring the Role of Connectedness to Nature, Climate Worry, and Talking with Friends and Family

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Lindsay P. Galway ◽  
Thomas Beery ◽  
Chris Buse ◽  
Maya K. Gislason
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Connectedness To Nature ◽  
Leverage Point ◽  
Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Relationship

Despite widespread calls to action from the scientific community and beyond, a concerning climate action gap exists. This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the role of connectedness to nature in promoting individual-level climate action in a unique setting where climate research and action are lacking: Canada’s Provincial North. To begin to understand possible pathways, we also examined whether climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends mediate the relationship between connectedness to nature and climate action. We used data collected via postal surveys in two Provincial North communities, Thunder Bay (Ontario), and Prince George (British Columbia) (n = 628). Results show that connectedness to nature has a direct positive association with individual-level climate action, controlling for gender and education. Results of parallel mediation analyses further show that connectedness to nature is indirectly associated with individual-level climate action, mediated by both climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends. Finally, results suggest that climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends serially mediate the relationship between connectedness to nature and with individual-level climate action. These findings are relevant for climate change engagement and action, especially across Canada’s Provincial North, but also in similar settings characterized by marginalization, heightened vulnerability to climate change, urban islands within vast rural and remote landscapes, and economies and social identities tied to resource extraction. Drawing on these findings, we argue that cultivating stronger connections with nature in the places where people live, learn, work, and play is an important and currently underutilized leverage point for promoting individual-level climate action. This study therefore adds to the current and increasingly relevant calls for (re-)connecting with nature that have been made by others across a range of disciplinary and sectoral divides.

scholarly journals Challenges of Compensation and Reparation for Loss and Damage Related to the Adverse Effects of Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Jorge Gabriel Arévalo García
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Loss And Damage ◽  
Legal Model ◽  
Adaptation Policies

Anthropogenic climate change has and will have unavoidable adverse effects despite mitigation and adaptation policies. Therefore, the financial burden of the costs of loss and damage must be distributed fairly and proportionally. This implies that those responsible for climate change must take responsibility and compensate those who suffer losses and, if possible, repair the damages related to this phenomenon. However, climate justice has been limited by the lack of a causal link between a specific climate change effect and specific damages or losses. Accordingly, this article discusses the compensation and reparation of losses and damages related to the adverse effects of climate change, as a stream applicable after mitigation and adaptation policies. In addition, this article reviews the implications of the relevant findings that established the existence and development of climate change as a problem that affects the enjoyment of human rights, to argue how the theory of human rights can contribute to the current legal model for reparation and compensation for losses and damages associated with climate change. Also, due to the impossibility of obtaining a legally binding agreement as a structure for integration, and to adequately address the problem of causes, consequences, benefits and burdens, vulnerable groups ought to be the most affected.

scholarly journals Urban Climate Policy and Action through a Health Lens—An Untapped Opportunity

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (23) ◽  
pp. 12516
Author(s):  
Audrey de Nazelle ◽  
Charlotte J. Roscoe ◽  
Aina Roca-Barcelό ◽  
Giselle Sebag ◽  
Gudrun Weinmayr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
International Society ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Environmental Epidemiology ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
Funding Opportunities

Motivated by a growing recognition of the climate emergency, reflected in the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), we outline untapped opportunities to improve health through ambitious climate actions in cities. Health is a primary reason for climate action yet is rarely integrated in urban climate plans as a policy goal. This is a missed opportunity to create sustainable alliances across sectors and groups, to engage a broad set of stakeholders, and to develop structural health promotion. In this statement, we first briefly review the literature on health co-benefits of urban climate change strategies and make the case for health-promoting climate action; we then describe barriers to integrating health in climate action. We found that the evidence-base is often insufficiently policy-relevant to be impactful. Research rarely integrates the complexity of real-world systems, including multiple and dynamic impacts of strategies, and consideration of how decision-making processes contend with competing interests and short-term electoral cycles. Due to siloed-thinking and restrictive funding opportunities, research often falls short of the type of evidence that would be most useful for decision-making, and research outputs can be cryptic to decision makers. As a way forward, we urge researchers and stakeholders to engage in co-production and systems thinking approaches. Partnering across sectors and disciplines is urgently needed so pathways to climate change mitigation and adaptation fully embrace their health-promoting potential and engage society towards the huge transformations needed. This commentary is endorsed by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and the International Society for Urban Health (ISUH) and accompanies a sister statement oriented towards stakeholders (published on the societies’ websites).

scholarly journals Fostering the ‘Time is Now' Mentality: The Role of Open Data In Urban Climate Resilience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keira Webster
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Contextual Data ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Innovative Products

Climate change is a systemic issue embedded in and interconnected with the social and economic makeup of a city. Building urban climate resilience requires innovative, collaborative solutions that hinge upon the openness and availability of current and contextual data. Open data tools, in stimulating information sharing, civic engagement, and innovative products, can contribute to climate change planning, building lasting resilience. Through an exploratory research methodology, this paper explores 17 international use cases, providing a basis for the implementation of open data tools in the realm of urban climate resilience, through the following five themes: 1) risk and vulnerability assessment; 2) the inception of initiatives; 3) diverging approaches to preparedness; 4) community mobilization; and 5) mitigation and adaptation. This research aims to spark a dialogue on the intersection of open data tools in urban climate resilience strategies, demonstrating open data as an appropriate tool to cultivate shared understanding and collective action.

Climate Change Law: Encounters with Aesthetics and Art

Climate Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 279-319
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Climate change has multifaceted aesthetic dimensions of legal significance. Global warming alters the aesthetic properties of nature, and further aesthetic changes are precipitated by climate mitigation and adaptation responses of impacted societies. The social and political struggles to influence climate change law are also influenced by aesthetics, as environmental activists and artists collaborate to influence public opinion, while conversely the business sector through its marketing and other aesthetic communications tries to persuade consumers of its climate-friendly practices to forestall serious action on global warming. This article distils and analyses these patterns in forging a novel account of the role of aesthetics in climate change law and policy, and it makes conclusions on how this field of law should consider aesthetic values through ‘curatorial’ guidance.

scholarly journals Communicating Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Efforts in American Cities

Climate ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Boussalis ◽  
Travis Coan ◽  
Mirya Holman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Adaptation Policies ◽  
American Cities ◽  
The City

City governments have a large role to play in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, given that urban locales are responsible for disproportionately high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are on the “front lines” of observed and anticipated climate change impacts. This study examines how US mayors prioritize climate policies within the context of the city agenda. Employing a computer-assisted content analysis of over 2886 mayoral press releases related to climate change from 82 major American cities for the period 2010–2016, we describe and explain the extent to which city governments discuss mitigation and adaptation policies in official communications. Specifically, we rely on a semi-supervised topic model to measure key climate policy themes in city press releases and examine their correlates using a multilevel statistical model. Our results suggest that while mitigation policies tend to dominate the city agenda on climate policy, discussion of adaptation efforts has risen dramatically in the past few years. Further, our statistical analysis indicates that partisanship influences city discussion on a range of climate policy areas—including emissions, land use policy, and climate resiliency—while projected vulnerability to climatic risks only influences discussion of climate resiliency and adaptation efforts.

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