From Ciara O’Riordan, AYCC Media Team and Sydney office volunteer.
It’s been a weird few months, hasn’t it? Recovering from the bruises of Copenhagen, we’ve struggled on here in Australia with an endless (and endlessly frustrating) back and forth on ETSs, CPRSs and WTFs…not many LOLs, though. Even for those who really care, it’s hard to keep engaged with the ever changing plans our political parties come up with every other week to solve the climate crisis. The only thing that remains the same is that everyone keeps talking! But for those struggling with the ‘isms,’ologies and acronyms of Australia’s climate change debate, you can find a serious overview of the Aussie issues here or a slightly more entertaining one here, and a very gentle intro to the international scene here.
Former UN human rights commissioner, ex-president of Ireland and all round super woman Mary Robinson was interviewed by the Guardian last week, and told them that she thinks governments were the among the biggest obstacles to achieving climate justice. Mary reckons Copenhagen was one massive dead canary in the coal mine (no pun intended, I’m sure), and that the solution to climate change lies in the hands of “civil society” …and by that you mean who, exactly, Mary? ”I mean churches, I mean business, I mean trade unions, I mean the environmental groups, development groups, human rights groups, youth groups – as never before we have to build up the pressure.” Preaching to the choir, sister!
Another big problem at the moment is the rise of climate change sceptics. It isn’t just happening here (I’m looking at you Andrew Bolt, Tony Abbott and Miranda Divine!), it’s happening in the UK too. The British equivalent of Penny Wong released an ad campaign based on nursery rhymes that was supposed to remind people of the threats posed by climate change, but there is speculation that there was a counter-campaign by deniers to sabotage it after the British Advertising Standards Authority was inundated with complaints.
The real issue here, however, is just how difficult it is to communicate the seriousness of climate change without sounding like the boy who cried wolf. When you go too hard on the doom-and-gloom-we’re-all-going-to-die angle, it creates paralyzing fear about the impacts of climate change. If you over-hype the threat of climate change’s impacts you ultimately play into the hands of critics, who can then dismiss the message by saying it’s ‘’alarmist’’. It also adds to something called ‘green fatigue’, where people just tune out completely. We face a really similar situation here in Australia, so you all need to put your massive brains to work and think of creative ways to inspire people to act, by getting involved in the AYCC’s Climate Reality Week!
But for those of us who grew up with a 30 second attention span, and even shorter retention rate, we’re still a bit hazy on what the real issue is, how it happened and what to do next. Ok…we could blame it on the smog, but we all know it’s cos of too much Simpsons, MTV and refined sugar – which is why it’s awesome that The Coalition of The Willing have united the best and most creative artists from around the world to animate the climate movement’s history in handy 30 second bite-size pieces. Watch the film at http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/ .
