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Category Archives: Communication

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3 August 2015, The Conversation, The scariest part of climate change isn’t what we know, but what we don’t. We know a lot about what climate change will do, but ‘when’ is a tougher question. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”: so goes a Danish proverb attributed variously to baseball coach Yogi Berra and physicist Niels Bohr. Yet some things are so important — such as projecting the future impacts of climate change on the environment — that we obviously must try. An Australian study published last week predicts that some rainforest plants could see their ranges reduced 95% by 2080. How can we make sense of that given the plethora of climate predictions? In a 2002 press briefing, Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defence, distinguished among different kinds of uncertainty: things we know, things we know we don’t know, and things we don’t know we don’t know. Though derided at the time for playing word games, Rumsfeld was actually making a good point: it’s vital to be clear about what we’re unclear about. So here’s my attempt to summarise what we think we know, don’t know, and things that could surprise us about climate change and the environment. Read More here

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20 July 2015, COIN, A Tale of Two Opinion Polls: As the old adage goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics – and the failure of UK pollsters to predict the outcome of the General Election earlier this year certainly did nothing to challenge this idea. Whether due to the influence of so-called ‘shy Tories’, or simply an outdated and unrepresentative method of phone-polling, the lesson was clear: individual surveys must be taken with a pinch of salt. Question-wording, sampling, timing and the method of administering a survey can all have a big impact on the result. And two polls released this week documenting global views on climate change illustrate this point perfectly.

The first – from the respected Pew Research Centre – was reported with the headline ‘climate change seen as top global threat’. More than 45,000 people across 40 countries were asked how concerned they were about a variety of international issues. Strikingly – and perhaps surprisingly given the lack of prominence given to climate change in most Anglophone nations – climate change came out on top. While US, European and Australian respondents were most fearful of ISIS and were often divided on climate change by political values, levels of climatic concern were so high in Latin America, and parts of Africa and Asia, that globally climate change was the leading issue.

A few days later, the climate-sceptic blog ‘Watts Up With That’ gleefully reported a similarly super-sized survey of global citizens, ‘My World2015’. Totting up the online votes of a staggering 7 million plus people, it captures the priorities of people from around the world, including many millions of people from countries with low incomes. When framed as a personal priority, rather than a global threat, climate change (perhaps unsurprisingly) comes last – after issues like ‘a good education’, and ‘better healthcare’. Read More here

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15 July 2015, The Monthly, Of Clowns & Treasurers, Joe Hockey and the myth of Coalition economic management. Economists often speak in Latin, and in Greek. We love to wear folk down with a few deltas and gammas before finishing them off with a bit of ceteris paribus. But one of our best tricks is to use words that sound like English but to which we attach our own very specific meaning. We use simple-sounding words like “efficiency” and “unemployment” to draw the unsuspecting into our conversation. Then we slam the door on their fingers when they admit to thinking that unemployment is measured by the number of people on the dole (it’s not) or that efficiency means reducing waste (not to economists it doesn’t). While economics provides a bunch of simple tools to help break down complicated problems, the language of economics is more frequently used to confound and confuse. Especially when it’s politicians talking about economics. The primary purpose of the econospeak that fills our airwaves, most of which is complete nonsense, is to keep ordinary Australians out of the big debates about tax, fairness, climate change and the provision of essential services. Econospeak is a great way to limit the options on our democratic menu. Would you like a small tax cut and a small cut in services or a big tax cut and a big cut in services? What? You want to spend more money in health and education? You must be mad. Just imagine how “the markets” would react to such a suggestion. The whole strategy has worked a treat for the past few decades. But even the most impenetrable language can’t keep people believing that preventing climate change or letting sick people see a doctor is unaffordable, or that the best way to help the poor is to cut taxes for the rich. A year ago, the Coalition government said we were “living beyond our means” and faced a “budget emergency” that, if not addressed, would lead us “into the eye of an economic storm”. Sound scary? Relax. Joe Hockey did. This year there is no budget emergency. Indeed, during the May budget speech Treasurer Hockey was decidedly chipper. In 12 months he shifted from doom and gloom to urging everyone to look on the bright side of life. He used his budget speech to tell Australians to “have a go” and after the recent interest rate cut he urged us to borrow up big. Read More here

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29 June 2015, The Guardian,Australian climate policy paralysis has to end, business roundtable says: Business and industry alliance sets out climate ‘principles’, including that climate policy should be ‘capable of achieving deep reductions’ in emissions. Groups included in the ‘climate roundtable’ include the Business Council of Australia and Australian Industry Group, along with environmental groups and unions. An unprecedented alliance of business, welfare and environmental groups and trade unions is demanding an end to Australia’s decade of political paralysis and division on climate policy, insisting the Abbott government make credible emission reduction commitments and the major parties agree on how the pledges should be implemented.In an attempt to reset the bitter political debate on climate policy, the powerful lineup of interest groups has reached a historic agreement on “principles” that should guide Australia’s climate policy.  Read More here. Read principles here

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