No Pressure Backlash Roundup

A Selection of the More Interesting Responses to the 10:10 Campaign Video No Pressure

As a final follow-up to a number of previous posts (here, here, here), there's a selection of responses to the No Pressure film discussed in the Guardian, here.

Climate Safety has an interesting discussion of the failed tactics used in the film here. For example:

Of course, its easy to be critical of any attempt to engage the public with climate change – it is a formidable challenge finding the right way of encouraging people to embrace low-carbon lifestyles. But gradually, social scientists and climate change communicators are starting to piece together good evidence on how to effectively communicate climate change. The recent report by the Climate Change Communication Advisory Group (CCCAG), a network of climate communication academics and practitioners, set out seven principles for communicating climate change to mass audiences:

1. Move Beyond Social Marketing

2. Be honest and forthright about the probable impacts of climate change, and the scale of the challenge we confront in avoiding these. But avoid deliberate attempts to provoke fear or guilt.

3. Be honest and forthright about the impacts of mitigating and adapting to climate change for current lifestyles, and the ‘loss’ — as well as the benefits — that these will entail. Narratives that focus exclusively on the ‘up-side’ of climate solutions are likely to be unconvincing.

a. Avoid emphasis upon painless, easy steps.

b. Avoid over-emphasis on the economic opportunities that mitigating, and adapting to, climate change may provide.

c. Avoid emphasis upon the opportunities of ‘green consumerism’ as a response to climate change.

4. Empathise with the emotional responses that will be engendered by a forthright presentation of the probable impacts of climate change.

5. Promote pro-environmental social norms and harness the power of social networks

6. Think about the language you use, but don’t rely on language alone

7. Encourage public demonstrations of frustration at the limited pace of government action
 
Finally, in probably the best discussion of the film that I have read, Luna17 describes it as "perhaps the worst campaign video I've ever seen." Luna goes on:
 
The basic failure here is its perpetuating of the myth that reducing carbon emissions is primarily a matter of individual responsibility, thus depoliticising the whole issue of climate change as well as misrepresenting the reality of what drives it. There's no sense that some forces in society - the aviation industry, say, or oil mutinationals - might perhaps be disproportionately responsible.
 
What I find especially nauseating is that in a number of the examples it's the higher-status individual - teacher, boss - who is enlightened about climate change while its their 'inferiors' - pupils, workers - who are ignorant and irresponsible. It is deeply snobbish and reinforces the mistaken idea that the elite is already 'on board' with tackling climate change, but now ordinary people need to be similarly convinced. 
 
I couldn't have put it better myself.