The Gorafi, a French cousin of The Onion, titled it: ‘IPCC report says there won't be enough trees left to print the next IPCC report’. Dark humor aside, the comparatively low impact from the recent IPCC release shows we are becoming numb to climate news and, most dangerously, insensitive to science alerting us about the unfolding climate crisis.
Our collective appetite for the futile seems insatiable, for instance, one month after their respective releases, Prince Harry’s book Spare had 12 times more global impact online than the recent IPCC’s major climate report*. Some experts say the public experiences an overwhelming glut of bad news, suggesting fatalism or doomism has replaced denialism as a significant obstacle to solving climate change.
So no, let’s not print the IPCC report, but instead look at it through the lenses of what communications can do to help solve the climate crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body established by the United Nations to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis for climate change, its impacts, and options for both reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a.k.a. mitigation, and adapting to the unavoidable effects of ongoing climate change.
Every five to seven years since 1990, the IPCC releases a series of reports called Assessment Reports (AR) the latest one being the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023, just published in March this year.
Numerous summaries and commentaries, which we won’t paraphrase, exist about this latest report; as an example, this top 10 Findings is a good resource, as well as this article from The New York Times.
These reports are intended to guide, not to prescribe policy and they are produced through a rigorous, scientific, and transparent process. However, as an intergovernmental body, the IPCC operates under the guidance of its member governments. As such, the reports are subjected to review and approval by governments before they are finalized, which can lead to some governments influencing the wording of the report to align with their interests or policies.
The latest IPCC report is not immune to such influence, with large meat and fossil fuels countries allegedly having put pressure to water down or remove text encouraging the reduction of meat consumption and the phasing out of fossil fuels, both major drivers of climate change.
33 years after the IPCC’s first report, GHG emissions are still growing instead of rapidly falling as science recommends. In this scenario, keeping global warming at +1.5°C by 2100 is becoming increasingly hard to achieve.
Although the IPCC report is a “practical guide to defusing the climate time bomb” as the United Nations Secretary-General said, it seems IPCCs recommendations are neither making the headlines nor drastically influencing policies as they should.
What can climate communications do?
With bad climate news pilling up, should we focus on highlighting the bright spots to keep optimism alive? Or rather, should we call out hypocrisy and lament our collective inability to truly turn the tide, in the hope that collective outrage will force the necessary changes?
We should do both at the same time. As David Wallace-Wells wrote in The Uninhabitable Earth**, “a state of half ignorance and half indifference is a much more pervasive climate sickness than true denial or true fatalism”. It is on this vast silent majority, half ignorant and half indifferent, that we must concentrate.
The essence of IPCC’s latest report appears to be the answer to that same question: How can we maintain sufficient hope, without evading the gloomy reality of the climate crisis, so that behaviors change for the better?
Our communications about climate are made particularly complex by the fact that humans are concurrently the cause, the victim alongside entire ecosystems, and the solution to the climate crisis.
Within those three tags, numerous ramifications exist -history, geography, politics, development levels and wealth distribution, and all point to a wide variety of responsibilities, levels of vulnerability to climate change, and solutions to be implemented or accelerated.
Add to that the decarbonization efforts from governments, companies and big polluters falling far short of the Paris Agreement requirements, and the fact that we are almost out of time (by the next edition of the IPCC Assessment Report, probably around 2030, all bets will be off). Then doubling or tripling down on responsible, solutions-driven climate communications at all levels is an imperative.
A genuine international push, in which each country must feel responsible for its fair share of the effort; a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, which are responsible for 80% of CO2 emissions; a clear, honest even if distressing, solutions-oriented climate discourse from politicians and political decision-makers about the necessary changes in lifestyle and wealth distribution are all no longer optional but urgently required, and must be accompanied by responsible communications, that demonstrate we still have the means to act.
What is your take on climate communications’ responsibilities, and on what could be done better in this area? Let us know!
NOTES
*Source: From 5/1/23 to 4/2/23 publications containing “Prince Harry” collected 21.9 M online engagements, while publications containing “IPCC” from 20/3/23 and 19/4/23 had 1.8 M engagements according to Talkwalker online search.
**The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells 2019. Penguin. Page 55.
Top image: A collage showing the online engagement of the publication of the IPCC report and Prince Harry's book. Credit: 10 Billion Solutions
ARTICLE AUTHORSHIP: 10 Billion Solutions – Climate & Sustainability Communications
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