Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for this interesting discussion. I would challenge the point in respect of education a little. Information and education are not the same thing. If we consider learning from information or even previous educational interventions, an example might be that I learned about box files in school but I do not use box files. Nonetheless, some of the ideas and attitudes that may have come from my education have a lingering effect. Behavioural measures that can be taken in respect of other practices are probably not a good measure in that regard. We have strong evidence around the impact of education. The ESRI has shown that 16- to 24-year-olds have attitudes that are far more transformative and that they are more willing to make radical changes. That is coming not only from an educational product that is given to people of those ages, it is also the result of the collective experience of examining an issue. That is something people do not often get to do but those in educational settings get to do it. This is not a matter of information going in and producing behaviours that come out. The collective experience of education contributed to the climate strikes which had the significant impact of bringing the issue to the public mind. It was not surprising that the movement involved people who were of school age. They had a luxury unavailable to those in workplaces of collectively examining an issue.

I challenge the idea that education does not make a difference. It is not the same as an anti-littering campaign when there are 20 or 30 children in a classroom discussing something together.

There are some really interesting points to be made on the narratives. I was struck by the stories-told element and also the point on the individual versus the collective. The latter point was very strong and clear and we need to listen to it. I am referring to the systemic and collective aspects. I would like to add to that. How important is the justice narrative in this regard? As somebody keen on more ambitious climate targets, I struggle with telling people not to fly when we have such large jet kerosene subsidies and telling people to turn off their lights at night when Ireland has had a 200% increase in data centre electricity usage. The danger is that this becomes an argument against climate action, just as we might ask why, if China is doing a certain thing, we should do anything. It is a question of how you present an injustice in terms of causes and sources, considering that it is not just about individuals but also about systemic elements. How do you channel the narrative into one about the systemic change needed rather than one about why individual action is pointless? We need to be honest about the narrative of despair and disempowerment that exists. My point is that the justice narrative serves as an empowerment factor and dynamic. The justice narrative is one of the strongest motivating stories, and it is true. We also hear untrue justice narratives that are not based on evidence. One example posits a rural–urban divide, which we have heard about. It is framed as a justice issue because it is one of the motivating pieces around inaction. How do we take the genuine justice issues, including the global ones, and make them part of the storytelling and narrative? The narrative is a little different from the science.

Some people are motivated by the science whereas others are motivated by seeing other people care. I refer to how important it is for somebody in a neutral position to see that somebody else really cares about an issue. How important is it to have evidence of the systemic factors? Even within journalism, how do we join the dots extending from the individual or the small-scale local element? On a practical level, I agree that we cannot necessarily fund all the media in this regard, but we could ascertain whether press releases are going to every local radio station and newspaper, as Senator Pauline O’Reilly mentioned, and whether accurate information in new scientific reports is made available and broken down in a localised way. For example, if one were considering active travel, one would not just be considering three or four voices in Galway, Mayo or elsewhere but also saying how Galway and Mayo sit in the broader picture and giving information about cities of a similar size in other places. Maybe making information more localised and giving a sense of conversation-----