Delivering the Climate Change Message

The champions were reluctant to interfere with people’s rights and freedom to choose, but the essence of their role was to change people’s behaviour. In order to reconcile these two things the champions were clear about how to deliver the message of climate change. In this section I will talk about the reluctance of participants to

‘preach’ to their colleagues and their contention that behaviour change could be achieved by ‘raising awareness’ and ‘providing information’.

The role of the champion was seen as ‘raising awareness’ (C-4, 34), ‘creating that awareness’ (A-8, 127) and ‘trying to educate people’ (C-5, 41-42). The

champions believed that by providing information about climate change they might encourage people to ‘choose’ climate-friendly lifestyles. A small minority of the champions did talk about a more direct approach to behaviour change. For example, one champion said:

Absolutely yeah, yeah if I thought they were just throwing paper in the bin or something I’d be like

‘why don’t you recycle that instead’. Yeah absolutely I’d be always like, yeah turning off lights or switching thin* appliances off. Yeah definitely I would, yep (C-4, 522-526).

For most of the champions, however, this was not an ‘appropriate’ way to approach the subject. They would provide information, but they were very reluctant to push it onto other people. One champion stated:

I think this is like kind of the way I like to, er, put it I don’t like preaching to people, erm, but I like to give people information so that they are better informed about the, er, the impact of the choices they make (C-5, 383-383).

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Climate protecting behaviour was offered as an option but people were not told what they should be doing. Respondents in general would pass ‘on the word without actually having to preach’ (A-5, 728). They said that they did not want to ‘lecture anybody’ (A-7, 600-601) or ‘preach to other people’ (C-6, 1113). One champion claimed that he had ‘never tried to preach to other people’ (B-5, 879). The role of the champion was ‘providing the information, raising awareness but not telling people what they should be doing’ (C-2, 861-863). In one case I asked the champion what she thought people should be doing to tackle climate change. Her response was: ‘to start with, I’d never say you should be’ (C-3, 229).

This reluctance to prescribe (and proscribe) actions further reflected the champions’ neoliberal understanding of ethics as subjective – a matter of preference.

They believed that people should choose what to believe and how to act and this informed the way they communicated the message of climate change. This provides more evidence of a dominant neoliberal discourse and it also provides further insight into the champions as passive or active. Prima facie, it could be argued that providing information is less active than actually telling people what to do. The champions certainly felt that the latter was more extreme. However, it could be argued that the degree of ‘agency’ amongst the champions is also subject to the information they were providing. If they were raising awareness about subversive climate discourses then this would indeed make them ‘active agents’. In chapters six and seven I will explore these roles in more detail as I consider what the champions were actually saying to their colleagues and the types of messages that they were delivering.

5.4 Conclusion

The role of the climate champions was to promote climate-protecting

behaviour in the workplace. They were expected to learn about the science of climate change, think about communication techniques and use their knowledge to implement behaviour change amongst their colleagues. Given the discursive nature of the

project, I have argued that this was not a straightforward activity. Every time the champions communicated a piece of information they were constructing a particular version of the world.

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In chapters six and seven I will identify the particular discourses that the champions were drawing on when they were talking about climate change. I will analyse the specific ways in which they were constructing ‘appropriate’ motivations and action. The purpose of this chapter was to provide a background to the

forthcoming analysis and consider the role of the champions in terms of knowledge, belief and limitations. I also considered the ways in which climate change was constructed as a problem.

I argued that the majority of the participants had a good general understanding of the science of climate change and that they drew on a scientific discourse when they described the problem. They rejected discourses of scepticism and pessimism:

climate change was real and something could and should be done about it. I then argued that the majority of the champions constructed the problem of climate change as a small ‘glitch’ in the neoliberal system. It was not a fundamental flaw in the current way we live our lives and we were already making some progress in addressing it. I suggested that this construction of the problem was likely to lead to the dominance of reformist discourses in terms of dealing with climate change.

Finally, I considered the limitations of the climate champion role. I argued that most of the champions were very reluctant to push their own views onto other people and tell them what they should and should not be doing. Many champions had argued that knowledge about climate change was objective and that this led to

‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ actions. However, when they talked about other people, the champions claimed that belief in climate change and climate-protecting behaviour were a matter of personal preference. People should choose what to believe and how to act. Moreover, when they talked to people about climate change, the champions were careful to avoid ‘preaching’. They were more comfortable simply providing information for their colleagues. I argued that these limitations were based on a neoliberal conception of rights and the sovereignty of individual choice and that this general dominance of neoliberalism further suggested the dominance of reformist discourses in terms of dealing with climate change. I also argued that, regardless of which discourses were dominant, the reluctance to interfere with people’s beliefs and lifestyles, suggested a passive role for the champion in the reproduction of dominant discourses.

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Chapter 6