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John: Hello, and thanks for joining us for this first of four special podcasts on climate change and health as part of the Lancet's 200th anniversary celebrations. I'm Jon Carson, an editor at the Lancet Planetary Health. And our topic for this first episode is a big one, how do we make change? There's almost global scientific and political consensus that anthropogenically driven climate change presents an enormous threat to society and to human and planetary well being.

Most countries have agreed, for example, to the Paris goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees. And many governments have committed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. Nevertheless, in many, if not most countries, action towards meeting those commitments is too little, too slow, or politically fragile, while climate change, denialism, delayism, misdirection and misinformation remain common.

Arguably, the scientific evidence on climate change and its implications has been strong enough to take action for decades, but it seems like that information alone hasn't been enough to drive sufficient change. In that context, today we're going to discuss what types of climate communication, social movements, activism might be most effective in persuading the public and politicians to support bolder action on climate change.

What's the evidence? And what do we still not know? And I'm pleased to say that we're extremely lucky to be joined today by two eminent and experienced guests in this field, Dana Fisher and Colin Davis. Dana is professor of sociology and director of the Center for Environment, Community and Equity at American University in Washington, DC.

She researches and has written prolifically on democracy, civic engagement, activism, environmental stewardship, and climate politics, including in a new upcoming book entitled, Saving Ourselves, From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, which comes out in January 2024 from Columbia University Press, but it can also be pre ordered in time before the next COP28 meeting.

And I'm hoping that we'll get to hear some of the insights from that work into the trends in nonviolent action and radical shifts in the climate movement in our conversation later on. Colin Davis is Professor and Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol, UK. Colin's research includes psychology of climate change communication, public perceptions of climate activism and media reporting, climate apathy, and group decision making and deliberative democracy.

in relation to climate change. In his personal life, Colin also has experience of campaigning on behalf of the UK Green Party, giving talks for the public on climate action, and as an activist member of the campaign group Extinction Rebellion. Welcome both, and thanks very much for joining us today. Colin, if you could start us off.

So I've talked about the fact that we've not seen as much action as you would think would happen given all the evidence around the dangers of climate change. Have we simply not communicated the science of climate change well enough? 

Colin: I don't think that's fundamentally the problem. Certainly there are some things that public could understand better about climate change.

They help consequences. Just how many millions of lives are at stake, and perhaps also the economics of climate change. So I think it's not well understood that half of global emissions are caused by 10 percent of the population. To a first approximation, This is an issue of rich people killing poor people, but as far as the science goes, this idea that people simply don't understand the science of climate change, and if they only did then we would be able to respond more adaptively, I don't think that is quite right.

People refer to that as the information deficit hypothesis. And it has fallen out of favour. Some might even say it's been debunked for, I would say, a couple of reasons. One is that it's clear that people are not simply passive receptacles for information. Our tendency and our ability to take in new information is influenced by our prior beliefs, those that is motivated reasoning.

Perhaps I can say a little bit more about that later. But then the other factor, certainly in a country like the UK is that actually if we look at public opinion polls. We find that the public are very much on board. They believe that climate change is real, caused by humans, that it is a serious threat.

Most people in the UK agree that there is a climate emergency, and they think that the government is not acting fast enough. Now, there are some aspects of the science that perhaps people get confused about. There's often conflation of global heating and air pollution and all sorts of things. plastic pollution.

And that's important because if people don't understand the fundamental cause, then it's harder for them to understand and embrace the solutions, and in particular the need to get to net zero emissions. But even here, what you find is that the majority of the UK public endorses the net zero target. The people who don't, unfortunately, are Conservative Party politicians.

A recent survey found that over 40 percent of Conservative Party MPs believe that we can stop climate change without reaching net zero. And that is a fundamental misunderstanding of climate science. It's rather worrying, and I think that is an example of that motivated reasoning I referred to earlier, where if you have information that conflicts with people's values, with their beliefs, then it's much more difficult for them to incorporate that into beliefs.

And one striking example we've seen of that is that both The Chief Scientific Advisor, Patrick Vallance, and the Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, had given climate change briefings specifically for UK MPs, and those have been terribly attended. Fewer than 10 percent went to Patrick Vallance's. I think, if I'm not mistaken, only 10 MPs out of 650 attended Chris Whitty's.

But the information is out there. It's not that we failed to convey it. It's that those who I could do the most with it, I'm not listening. 

John: Interesting. Thank you. Dana, I wonder from a U. S. perspective, do you think it's a similar situation over there in terms of having to combat misinformation, misunderstandings about what's needed in terms of action?

Dana: Thank you for your question, John. Which I actually, while Colin was speaking, I pulled out my first book, which was called National Governance in the Global Climate Change Regime, which was published in 2004. And in the book, I cite an interview I had with Bob Watson, who was then the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC.

Where he specifically said science is necessary, but insufficient for climate action. And basically we're in the exact same position we were then. There was absolutely plenty of scientific evidence about climate change back in the early aughts or even in the 1990s when I was originally doing the research, but there was no political will.

And today, and I'll just speak to the United States case, but this case is consistent across the world. And we talked about it in the most recent IPCC. Assessment where I was a contributing author for working group three. There is a, an overwhelming push by vested interests that are connected directly and indirectly, in some cases, to fossil fuel interests to block and limit climate action at the international level, as well as in the national level across countries, and we see it playing out in the ways that countries are responding to the threat of the climate crisis, as well as in the ways that the international negotiations take place.

As well as even in the decisions about what gets published in the IPCC in terms specifically to the way that the Summary for Policymakers is published after it's been watered down and vested interests. are finally mentioned in the most recent IPCC reports, but nobody ever actually is permitted to name fossil fuel interests, which I can tell you was in our drafts and was taken out before it was published.

You specifically asked about the United States and I just, it was impossible not to mention this because it's so frustrating. In my new book, I talk about the way that my first book, Said that we should be moving forward on climate policymaking because of the precautionary principle Which was originally the way that we all thought about addressing Threats that may or may not come to counter fruition Now, we're basically 20 years past that publication just about, and at this point, nothing has changed in terms of the slope at which CO2 emissions are building in our atmosphere.

The slope is consistent, even though there are incremental policies, there are promises, but there's just so little action. And that is overwhelmingly the case in the United States, where just going back to vested interests, there's been some really useful research that maps out the ways that policymakers Have connections to these vested interests and it's not just representatives who come from states where they actually extract fossil fuels Or are particularly relying on burning the fossil fuels fossil fuel interests support campaigns of elected officials across political parties And around the united states and their voting records are substantially affected And there's evidence of this published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently that specifically documents that.

And if you did that kind of analysis around the world, although I don't know that it has been done explicitly, I predict that there's overwhelming reason to believe that we would see the exact same patterns play out. 

John: So I know, Colin, you've written about the issue of group identity as a barrier to changing people's or individuals minds about climate change action, but just hearing what Dana said there about the scale of vested interests in the U.

S. Do you think if in terms of climate change communication, if you're presenting people with evidence about the nature of vested interests around climate change, is that something that can break through the barriers of group identity? Group 

Colin: identity is certainly an issue, partly because we often assign greater information value to people who belong to our own group.

For that reason, it is beneficial when you have people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, comes from a Republican background. He can speak to Republican voters much more effectively than a Democrat politician might be able to. Having said that, there are lots of important psychological mechanisms going on, but I agree absolutely with what Vayner was just saying, that the fundamental problem, like the vested interests, who have been very successful in exploiting.

Sometimes people talk about this problem as if humans simply have this hardwired problem, inability to think about big global problems like climate change, and I just don't think that's the case. We do have difficulties thinking rationally, and we have some difficulties thinking long term, but these are things we can do, but very powerful vested interests have done what they can to.

To exploit failures of human reasoning and to propagate misinformation and to spread these discourses of delay. To 

John: both of you, to Dana as well, do you think that within the research into climate change communication, we've seen a change in attitudes towards what's needed and towards engagement in advocacy, for example?

Dana: I would say that it's not just the climate change communication community. I would say it's. Climate science broadly defined, and I use science to include social science, natural science, atmospheric science, and even those folks in the humanities who are looking at the climate crisis. So I just think it's important to make that clear, but across the board, first of all, in the period of time that I've been studying climate policy, making climate activism, which is over 25 years the community of scholars who are working on this issue has grown exponentially.

But in addition to that, many people have just gotten extremely frustrated. We saw many scholars who were contributing to the IPCC's most recent assessment report actually specifically respond to a survey saying that they didn't believe that countries were going to meet the Paris Agreement deadlines in terms of the 1.

5 degree Celsius capping of global warming. And this survey came out in 2021, so that's two years ago, and then we've been living through this, I don't know, what we want to call summer 2023, the summer of climate shocks or something like that. And I think that there are very few scholars who are working in this area who have a lot of confidence that the science is going to set us free, even though perhaps we thought that back in the 1990s.

At this point, I think that a lot of the scientific community is starting to wonder what they should be doing more to get the research and what they know is absolutely true based on their research out into the general public and how they communicate it. For example, I'm writing a book for a trade audience, which is absolutely not where I thought I would probably, absolutely not where I would, I thought I would be going 20 years ago.

But today my goal is to get the word out to the general public, not just to the small community of scholars who might speak with on a regular basis. I know Colin has shifted to advocate in his own way, but I think we're all trying to use all the tools in our toolbox to get the word out and communicate it more effectively to the general public.

Because one of the things that my research shows is that the citizenry and the general public is the most likely place where we can put pressure to get to the changes that are necessary to respond to the climate crisis at the level that is needed. 

John: And so if I could pick up on that and ask an intentionally sort of binary question, does radical climate change action help or hinder the climate change cause in terms of its response from the public and politicians?

Dana: Okay, I'll go, but then I want to pass this over to Colin because I know his work also speaks to this. And just to say, what I did in my recent book, I've actually disaggregated this type of nonviolent civil disobedience that we see in the climate movement. And because I think that. It's been treated as a monolith, and as a result, it's really hard to understand in terms of interpreting the effectiveness, measured however we choose to measure it.

And so one of the things that I do in the book is I talk about this distinction between what I, the groups that I call the shockers, and that is those who are using nonviolent direct action to elicit shock. And their goal is specifically to affect public opinion and gain media attention. And that's how they specifically measure their effects.

And that's in contrast to what I call the disruptors. And the disruptors are those who use nonviolent direct action to disrupt as part of a broader repertoire of contention or campaign. And there we see activists who have this kind of broad campaign around, for example, the student divestment movement, which we see it.

Around the world at this point that is working to lobby university officials to bring in well known and alumni as well as to gain public pressure to pressure the universities to divest from fossil fuels and at the same time at specific moments in time they engage in civil disobedience, which is nonviolent, to get more attention and media coverage to the campaigns that are more broad.

And when we pull these two apart, we see that there are groups that are, some groups are doing both, but mostly we see that there is a handful, a growing handful, that I guess is going to become more than a handful soon. Organizations that are specifically using shock. And when we talk to them about how they define success, they define it specifically as media hits.

I had a long conversation with Margaret Klein Solomon and others that were involved in. Funding and engaging in this type of shock focus, civil disobedience in DC when Margaret Klein Solomon was here to talk about her book and they specifically listed hits on social media, as well as counts of articles and where the articles got picked up about the activism.

To measure the success of the efforts and the different actions. And I think it's really important when we think about the effects of the activism, that we understand that while there is these overarching, broad, general, societal goals, in every case you see a movement and a group that is using specific measures.

To identify and evaluate the effectiveness of their actions And I think it's really important to use those measures to determine whether or not they are affected So certainly if we're talking about just getting media hits these actions are Extremely effective and they are way more effective than the legally permitted marches and these other types of demonstrations Which were extremely common during the period of?

The resistance here in the United States during the Trump administration, and also are very common around the world. So I think that is really important as a measure. The only other thing I'll say before I pass this over to Colin is that when we think about the disruptors and their activism, there are other more locally embedded types of measures of effect in terms of, for example, of specific universities, as well as the number of overall universities that have chosen to divest or chosen not to take fossil fuel money anymore to fund their research.

And that is a really good measure of the effectiveness of this activism as well. And so I talk about these different ways of thinking about it in the book, but I think it's really hard because I'm always asked, I'm sure Colin is too, by the by journalists. Is it effective? Yes or no? That's the answer. And the thing is, it's just such, it's so much more difficult and more nuanced of a question than that, because it's all about is it effective to whom and how do we measure this kind of effectiveness?

And with that, I'm going to pass it to Colin. 

Colin: I would endorse everything Dana said. And of course, there is a great deal of nuance here. Coming back to what you're saying, Dana, about, It's termed radical and it is all relative, isn't it? And indeed, one of the things that we've seen over the last few years have been some calls from some activists and scholars for increasing the range of actions.

So in particular, I'm thinking of the book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which Denita is reaching for on her shoulder, there it is, by the Swedish scholar Andreas Malm. It's not an instruction manual, but it is. A provocation suggesting that the time for what he refers to as strategic pacifism by climate activists is over.

But here I think we have to distinguish between different things, which is how people feel about the protesters and what they're doing and how they feel about their cause. And often people talk as if they have this internal mental model whereby the extent to which I support some protesters demand depends upon how I feel about those protesters, but actually I think the research shows that isn't the case.

But I've done experimental research looking at this and We can do various things to, to manipulate the degree to which people will support or not support protesters, depending upon how they're described and what newspaper articles. And it turns out that has no influence at all on the extent to which people support demands.

You'll often hear people say things to protesters when, certainly I've heard this many times, anyone who's engaged in direction will have heard this, I agree with what you're saying, but I just don't like the way you're going about it. That is a truthful response. People don't like the protesters, but that is, in a sense, the price of admission for activists that are forced to do these things that they don't necessarily like doing themselves.

But they know that it will have an impact. Is it just about attention seeking? Maybe that can seem a bit adolescent somehow to do it, but I'd argued it is important. And one of the measures that we can look at for that these measures, these polls are conducted every few weeks by polling agencies like YouGov, where they ask people, what are the most important issues facing the country?

The environment has become a top three or top four issue. So roughly a third of UK adults will list the environment amongst their top three now. Now that wasn't the case prior to April 2019. We saw a big spike then. What is it that happened then? Maybe there were multiple things going on, but certainly one very salient thing was that Extinction Rebellion held this occupation of London that lasted for two weeks and it was very unpopular when it started but in addition to getting people's attention it got the issue onto front pages, newspapers, it engulfed a meeting with Michael Gove at the time.

It puts pressure on politicians and it's not necessarily, I would argue, about shifting people's opinion. I think it's more about attracting the attention of people who already hold the opinion that climate change is a serious threat. That more needs to be done about and it's a reminder that this threat has not gone away So to the extent to which activists can have that kind of agenda seeding and in a sitting role Then I think this can be a successful kind of technique Which is not to say that, obviously, that this has solved the problem far from it.

But we also have to consider, in terms of the global perspective, as we referred to earlier, that we've had decades now when everything has failed. So if activists have not yet succeeded in bringing about radical climate action, then perhaps we have to cut them a little bit of slack. I just wanted 

Dana: to add two things.

To Colin's points. And I think he did such a wonderful job of talking about these subjects. But just to say that there's a lot of evidence that climate activism that involves civil disobedience is always unpopular and actually I talk about in the new book and provide some evidence from Gallup that specifically looks at the civil rights movement that everybody today in the United States.

conversation that the White House thinks about is, of course, everybody was so supportive of the activists and the nonviolent civil disobedience that happened. But actually, that's absolutely not true. And that's just people recalling in a much more positive way than they did at the time, because there was a lot of norm breaking taking place with these sit ins that spread across the country.

The other thing I just wanted to mention and I think it's an important next subject for conversation, not necessarily today, but that I think we're going to have to talk about. And I do touch on it in the book. And that is the question of how tactics will continue to radicalize. So right now we see very, as I said before, I call these tactics relatively tame in terms of radical tactics.

But we know from previous social movements that tactics do continue to radicalize, and I'm not sure that they're going to follow Malm's suggestions. They might. People might be just aiming to destroy public property. But one of the things that we will absolutely see is increasing violence against the protesters.

And we're seeing also increasing costs to protesters who are engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, even though it's nonviolent, and even though it may be just Slow walking on a street, sitting down on a highway. What we're seeing is increasing damages charged to the activists themselves. But what we're going to see is an escalation that is very common amongst activists in response to both the responses by law enforcement, which are getting more aggressive, particularly in the United States.

We've seen that, and I'm sure we will see that around the world. But also, when we see counter protesters get involved, and if there's any indication from previous protests and movements that are well documented, that will lead to an escalation in violence on both sides. 

John: Are there historical examples of what makes a successful social movement in terms of achieving its goals?

Dana: The characteristics of the movements vary. I think that movements that are aiming to substantially change, movements that are really trying to Affect substantial social change, for example, responding to Jim Crow and earning black Americans the right to vote in the United States. What we see in research around that is that there is a need to shock.

The general public, or at least those that are sympathizers to the movement out of their sympathy to plight of the protesters to actual action. And what I mean by that is that if we look at the research that documents how the civil rights movement changed over time and how it played a role in shifting, not just public opinion, Which was really about motivating those sympathizers, those who were sympathetic to the cause of Black Americans to getting them to do something.

It was this moment when we saw Black Americans being beat up on national television. And we saw violence playing a role in, not in the activists doing the violence, but rather violence against them. And that was when, all of a sudden, it's well documented that many Americans shifted their opinions and weren't just It's sympathetic to the cause of Black Americans, but we're actually willing to do something about it.

And that threat to the polity in terms of those who were elected officials who said they cared about Black Americans, but weren't willing to actually affect change, that changed because they all of a sudden started to worry about their legitimacy and their capacity to stay in office. So their power got threatened.

And the question is, how do we see a social movement today? get to that point where those people in power, those vested interests, all of a sudden start to feel like their power is at risk and their legitimacy is at risk. And that is when we'll see the social change happen. And that's what I, that's how I talk about where we see activism, as well as policymaking going when we think about the climate crisis.

Colin: Yes, I would agree with all that. And it's remarkable the ability people have to see things happening to others. And think but that's not going to happen to me. And then there are some extraordinary surveys where people respond, yes, I think climate change is a terrible threat to the world. Yes, a terrible threat to people in my country.

Yes, it's a huge threat to my community. And then they ask, but is it a threat to you? Oh, no, I'll be okay. And hopefully we don't have to rely on only those people who are victims of climate disasters who We'll experience that anger and do something with it. But the other thing I'd add is that what your question alludes to is to what extent will sometimes referred to as negative emotions, fear, anger, bring about changes in people's opinions and their action, and what we know from psychology is that it can do, but we need not just that sense of increasing urgency.

But also a sense of agency. Some of your listeners, I'm sure, will resonate with this, that when you have people who face medical threats, let's say, I drink too much and I need to reduce my alcohol intake, or my salt intake, I need to quit smoking and so on, you need two things. You need to make sure that people have the information that if they don't change their behavior, then they have a very high risk of suffering negative consequences.

But also, they need to have, not just the information, but the belief that there is something that they can do about it. This sense of self efficacy. And, I think that's the critical thing now. We have both the threat, and that's going to increase over time as we have more of these events reported in the media, or even happening to us.

But we also need people to believe that there is something that they can do about it. And that perhaps is where the danger lies. If people don't think there's anything they can do about it, then that may be the thing. It either leads them to become somewhat hopeless, or perhaps to engage in further denial, whether that's outright explicit denial that this is happening, complete irrationality, or a more subtle form of denial that's sometimes referred to it's a term coined by a sociologist.

Stanley Cohen of implicatory denial, where I accept, for instance, the reality of climate change, but I just don't think about what it means, exactly how it's going to exert an impact on me. And I think you could argue that on a societal level, we are already experiencing that. So Dana was referring previously to climate scientists being asked, are we going to stay within one and a half degrees, which is something that I've been asking climate scientists for several years now.

Whenever I meet a new climate scientist, I ask them, what do you think? And I'm sorry to say, That they all say no chance and that's striking right because We have all these international meetings the politicians saying yes We're going to stay within one and a half degrees and yet the experts say no, that's not going to happen that seems rather striking to happen denial 

Dana: I want to just add to that and say that you know We people always are talking about a performative character of the activism Be it the more confrontational civil disobedience or these demonstrations.

But one of the things that I like to respond with is to point out how performative these climate negotiations have become, and I don't go to them anymore. I went to them run back during the days of the Kuno protocol. Cause that's what that earlier book was about back when we really thought we could save the world and everybody would embrace the precautionary principle, which I realize now was.

Absolutely naive, but it's just so performative. The idea of all of that carbon being spent for people to fly to Abu Dhabi this fall and sit and listen to. A fossil fuel magnet tell everybody the way that we need to invest in technology that's not verified to actually work and that's going to save us so that we can kick the can down the road another year.

All the scientists that I talked to, they roll their eyes when you ask them about the 1. 5 degree threshold because it's just, in 2018 it was like unlikely, but maybe possible, but we're five years later now. And it's just, so it's just very frustrating. Pitching on that 

John: importance, Colin not not engendering hopelessness and employing a positive framing.

around action on climate change and since we are a health journal, do you think highlighting the health co benefits of action on climate change is an effective way to win people over towards actions and policies? 

Colin: I think if you're talking about individual actions that people can take, it's certainly beneficial.

For people to be aware that if they cycle or walk instead of using their car then that will have benefits to their own health In addition to the other benefits and likewise changes in diet and so on. I didn't necessarily think that is where we should be focusing our attention. It's a good thing to do.

Everything we're talking about here is about the need for changes at a societal and political level for any medical professionals that are listening, thinking, what can we do to help with that? Then I would suggest they would do better to think about what are the leaders. within their own professional life that maybe they can draw on.

There was an article in the British Medical Journal, it's just come out, an opinion piece suggesting that health professionals should now refuse to work on new fossil fuel projects when they have these new oil and gas projects they need. Meta professionals there, their own power to influence policy is greater when they join with others.

Our collective power is much greater than our individual influence. They might consider joining groups like XR Medics. They don't necessarily have to get involved in law breaking activities. If nothing else, I'll have the opportunity to meet really extraordinary individuals. That's where I'd encourage people to focus on what can I do to help bring about system change aspects rather than necessarily focusing on individual action.

Dana, I know 

John: that you've written a lot about intersectionality within climate movements and activism. Could you talk a bit more about the developments and the importance of that? 

Dana: Let's see. My work on intersectionality actually started. outside of the climate movement. So I study activism more broadly.

And it actually started with some research that I started, I was doing with scholars who focus on critical race, which at the time, nobody had heard of. And which is funny now in the United States, we actually were going out to the Women's March in 2017, the day after the inauguration of President Trump.

And we were trying to update a survey instrument that I had been using for many years, most recently, actually before that at the people's climate arch in 2014, so we wanted to update that so that we were addressing all of the big questions that we thought were relevant, but also maintaining the ethics approval that I had already received, which takes a while.

And so we needed to do that. So I sat down with these scholars who focus on issues related to critical race and they said, Let's think about who we think will be out in the crowd and I said, Oh, I'm curious about how the climate activists come out because obviously Donald Trump was campaigning about how he digs coal and how all of the climate policies that Obama had put into effect were going to get canceled.

And so I expected to see the climate activists out and I expected to, of course, women would come out because it was a women's movement. And then my colleagues were saying how they were interested in seeing how the Black Lives Matter movement might mobilize around this. And so we started thinking about all the different ways that different folks who were engaged and connected to different movements might be out in the streets.

And so we asked questions about what motivated people as well as their identities. To pull apart intersectionality within the crowds. And out of that work, I actually started focusing specifically on intersectionality, more broadly. That is the combination of identity and issues that motivate people to mobilize, to participate in activism.

And I did it across many different protests during the period of the Trump administration, America resistance, which was my last book. And then continued that around the protests after George Floyd was murdered. Protests against systemic racism that mobilized around the United States after that happened.

And what we've really found in that work is the ways that identity is connected to the types of issues that bring people out in the streets. And we saw it particularly after George Floyd was murdered. In the ways that you saw much broader mobilization than ever before for the civil rights movement.

And so a number of scholars and civil rights activists who had been around and writing during the 1960s in the United States. came out and said, wow, I've never seen such diverse crowds before. And we really, we documented in the work that we did in D. C., New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, that there were much more diverse crowds than that had been at the Black Lives Matter protests that had happened prior to George Floyd being murdered.

But we also, and I wrote a paper about how we saw intersectionality and the ways that people came out and. said they were not. They obviously were out because of systemic racism and police brutality, but they were combining that with other issues that were mobilizing them. And that led me to start to think about how this might play out within the climate movement.

And so one of the things that's really clear. Based on the research I've done on the climate movement is that even though activists who are engaged in climate activism are very concerned about justice broadly defined, and they specifically talk about climate justice, racial justice, and economic justice and economic equity.

as primal motivations for engaging in activism. We still see that the people who are participating, at least in the United States, in this type of activism are predominantly white, predominantly highly educated. And the question is, how do you broaden this? And the other thing is that they're connected mostly with very climate related groups, many of who are what we call these big green, more privileged groups that are not connecting at all to communities of color and frontline communities within the climate crisis.

So the question is about when we think about intersectionality in the climate movement, how does the climate movement expand not just to be about issues of justice, broadly defined, but also to mobilize broader proportions of the population to engage in climate activism. And so actually in the end of the book, I talk about ways that the movement may be able to create community and real solidarity across movements.

across identities. And one of the things that, that we've seen is that so far the labor movement, which has been growing in a really remarkable way in the United States, has not connected very well with the climate movement. And I talk a little bit about that and I did some interviews with labor leaders about why that is and the ways that clean energy diffusion has been pitted against labor because a lot of these clean energy companies are not using union labor, and there is not a really strong connection to and concern for workers.

And so I talk about the ways that solidarity may be built there. And there's no question that activists who come from poor backgrounds and particularly from communities of color need to be more engaged and connected to the climate movement. We haven't seen that yet, but intersectionality I think is key for seeing the type of broad scale movement that is necessary to mobilize the kind of action from the government and other decision makers and other powers that be that will bring us past and through the climate crisis.

John: And I was interested to see in your latest book about the radical flank, even though I suppose I would and other people would typically think of youth movements and young people as the face of the climate movement, actually in terms of age demographics, it was quite spread. 

Dana: So this is a recent article I wrote.

That was published at the Brookings Institution that specifically looks at new data from activists who are engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House Correspondents Dinner last spring. And then I track and map out the different organizations. That the activists who were there were connected with and the ways that they're engaging in civil disobedience.

And what's really interesting is we see a broad group of adult led groups that are actively involved in nonviolent civil disobedience around the issue, the climate issue now, which is really different from the radical flank within the civil rights movement, which was almost entirely made up of youth led groups.

And it's interesting because the media really wants to talk about young people. And they really want to, I would actually say that I think they really want to fetishize youth and how young people are so naive that they're engaging in more. confrontational activism, which is unfortunate because that's not really the story when we look at the data.

And there's no question that a lot of young people are becoming extremely frustrated with the slow pace of progress and the ways that a lot of the mainstream social movement organizations are taking on the climate crisis using more institutionalized political levers, which are not working fast enough and are only at best implementing These incremental policy changes that are not going to get us where we need to go.

But still, right now, if you look at the people participating in the more confrontational civil disobedience, That is really a combination of adult led groups, many of whom actually were active in the civil rights period and said they have to come back out in the streets because they feel compelled because of the climate crisis.

And they're working and using this intergenerational knowledge transmission. Through engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, which is really remarkable and interesting and a wonderful story to tell. 

Colin: Yes, we see exactly the same in the UK. And there are these remarkably inspiring octogenarians. And relate to this issue of the way in which media will try to fetishize youth and focus on Protesters fitting a certain stereotype.

That fits in with this thing that's referred to as the protest paradigm, which is a quite deliberate attempt to delegitimize protest. I made reference earlier to XR medics, so these are groups of doctors, nurses, other health professionals who are incredibly concerned about climate crisis and have seen it happening and seen its influence in their own clinical experience.

And regularly when they take part in actions, they're not reported on. Or there is this suggestion that they're not really doctors and nurses, they're people dressing up in scrubs. 

John: To end with, I wonder if I could ask you, could you just give us one priority that you see for the future of research in this area?

what you think is a priority and also an example of a positive action that you think an individual could take to influence societal or political change on climate. 

Colin: Fundamental problem relates to vested interests. A lot of people used to say Once renewable energy is cheaper than non renewables, then the economic system will just make it so that we have this very rapid transition.

In fact, wind and solar have been cheaper than oil and gas for some time now. There are much greater profits to be had in non renewables. If you make people burn the energy you're providing, they have to come back to you. That's why oil and gas companies want to continue drilling oil and gas reserves, finding new reserves.

It's why the petro states want to sit on these assets which had huge value but will lose all of their value if we have this transition. Now it's not that the people don't have any influence on politicians but they really need to shout loudly and, I would argue, come out on the streets en masse. And the problem we have is that it's not that people are not concerned about climate change, it's that they don't know what to do about it.

And they don't believe that if they were to take part in climate action that it would have any impact. Now, perhaps they've observed that relatively small scale actions haven't led to an impact. But we do have good examples from history, as Dean was talking about before, suggesting that mass collective action can bring about change.

So I think an important research problem is how do we enhance people's sense of collective efficacy, so they believe that when people come together, they can bring about change. That we do have a system that can allow people to influence governments to confront these vested interests. But whatever you do, it will depend upon your own personal theory of change.

I do encourage people to be thinking about what are the things that I can do that can have an oversized influence that can bring about change at a societal level rather than necessarily focusing on the small things that you can change in your own personal life. 

Dana: I agree with everything Colin said, but I also think, and Colin and I have talked about this before, like we, we really do need to pull apart.

More about specific types of activism and how activism does have an effect when it has an effect And what the effect is, and I have to say that since Colin and I started having this conversation, we also talked with Oskar about this as well, Oskar Berglund, I've had a number of conversations with foundations who really want me to tell them whom they should fund to do climate activism.

But when I say what we really want to know is we really should take that funding. and apply it to understanding when the activism works and when it doesn't, and in what way can we find pressure points that would be effective. And the second that I start talking about funding research about the activism, they just lose all interest, start looking away, or say they have to go.

It's extremely frustrating. We social scientists have historically been underfunded, even though we know that the climate crisis is a social crisis, and we also know that any solution that comes from it We'll have to come from the social side because it's not, the atmosphere isn't going to fix itself, even if they end up deciding to use geoengineering, that is going to be a social decision.

And it is going to be determined probably by those same vested interests that Colin was talking about, which makes it quite dangerous. So I'm going to pitch for funding the research that, that we have all found underfunded over the years, but is going to be more and more important as the world warms.

Thanks. With regard to what everybody should do, and I know your listeners, many of them are medical professionals. In my book, I end with three specific points. So as I said, it's a trade book. So I'm trying to talk about what we should be doing to save ourselves. And the book makes this very strong case that we can't be counting on the state or the market to save us.

This isn't. With the ozone hole, where the market's going to figure out that technological fix and bam, we're all going to be happy. Because if that had been the case, like Colin mentioned, it would have been when wind and solar power became accessible to the general public and. Financially viable, but we haven't seen that happen at all because of these vested interests.

So instead, I talk about three ways that we can save ourselves. And one is by creating community and real solidarity. And that is really specifically to folks who want to mobilize and engage in activism, to think about activism that's connected with community within their communities, embedded and connected to organizations, as well as solidarity across movements and people with different identities and orientations.

Next is I think that activism. And people who engage in activism really do need to capitalize on moral shocks, be it climate shocks, but also including violence, and particularly what I expect is that we're going to see more and more violence against the activists, and I think activists and organizations need to be prepared to capitalize on that, even though it's extremely unfortunate, and I am not, and I know that some people will say, I am not calling for violence, I am just, as a social scientist who studied activism for a very long time, No, that is a necessary progression.

When we continue down this road of mobilization and mass mobilization that we're going to see. And finally, because as we talked about here, all of the scientists who study this recognize that we are nowhere near where we need to be in terms of resolving the climate crisis or halting global warming. So we know that we are facing a world that has more climate shocks that come more frequently and are more severe.

Then even summer 2023 in the future and so what I think that everybody can do whether or not they want to be an activist is they can work to cultivate resilience and I talk about resilience here in a way that we talk about in the climate community. That is, preparing communities to adapt and respond to climate shocks as well as the social shocks that are likely to come from a changing climate.

Be it forced migration, be it water shortages, be it flooding, be it Down the street from here we had an extreme weather event a couple weeks ago where a house literally was split in half by a tree. And how communities respond to and help people. Who are going to experience all around them climate shocks.

So there are so many ways to do that. One of my other projects is actually working with the administration here in the United States, as they try to develop programs that train young people to work on resilience in their communities through the government and be funded by the government to be trained so that.

They'll be there and be at the ready as the climate shocks become more severe and more common and more frequent. So I think those are the three things and you don't have to be an activist to be prepared and to help get us ready for what's coming, but unfortunately, I now call myself an apocalyptic optimist, which is that I just don't think that we're going to get ourselves out of this.

Without experiencing a lot more climate shocks and a lot more social disruption that's going to be caused by it.

Gavin: Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the Lancet Voice. This podcast will be marking the Lancet's 200th anniversary throughout 2023, by focusing on the spotlights with lots of different guest hosts from across the Lancet group. Remember to subscribe if you haven't already, and we'll see you back here soon.

Thanks so much for listening.