Want to accelerate climate action? Show people real-life benefits - POLITICO Europe
Want to accelerate climate action? Show people real-life benefits - POLITICO
Michael Shank is director of engagement at the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance.
For years, the priority of many environmentalists has been to get the public to care about climate change via data and science — to agree that we do, indeed, have a problem that needs fixing.
But to truly connect with people, we need to understand what they care about. And it’s time for the climate community to reorient toward empathy, and approach people’s pressing day-to-day needs with understanding.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.