Dr. Pete Lunn:

I would go a little further on that. I think it is hard for journalists to tell the story, and the committee will note that I said "tell the story". Often in discussions like this we think of the media and journalists as providing information. They do not, really, or they do so in almost a collateral manner. What journalism actually does is tell stories. If it did not, it would be deeply boring to watch the news - far more boring than it is now. It has to be told as a story. The classic stories are that somebody has messed up, some people are having a fight, and something has gone wrong, preferably with some pictures associated showing it going wrong. Those are really easy stories to tell, and climate is a very hard story to tell. The narrative is often "it is even worse than we thought", but we have been hearing that narrative for a very long time. How many notches of "even worse" can we go to? That narrative does not work any more.

There are other narratives that are important here. A narrative of what the future might look like is a good one, and we do get news stories in various walks of life that align with that narrative. "Here is a cool piece of kit that works, and we can show you pictures of it" is a good narrative that might work. Telling stories that spread information on solutions and technology and what communities are doing is entirely possible. I also totally understand, however, that there are former colleagues of mine who would cringe at the thought of somebody telling them they have to tell good news stories. That is seen as a journalistic error of judgment within the media community, and I understand that. There are therefore real challenges there, but the key to understanding those challenges is that the media tell stories. They do not provide information; information happens as part of stories.

The second point Senator O'Reilly made about there being powerful groups that have vested interests is very important. I will give the committee a brief example of that. I will not name names, but Members will hear certain representatives, lobby groups and people representing particular industries go on about differences between Dublin and the rest of the country and urban-rural divides on climate change. The interesting thing is that when we try to measure that, which we do through proper, nationally representative surveys that have been properly piloted and constructed to ask people using instrumentation that is designed to measure things properly, there is hardly any urban-rural divide on climate change. There is therefore a real problem there of particular people and groups trying to exploit those kinds of differences for self-interest. It is important we try to spread that research in a way that allows us to call that out when we see it.

Going back to the idea that climate change is a collective action problem on which we all have to act together, identity politics and division - splitting the country into naysayers and others - is really problematic for trying to solve the problem. It has to feel like we are acting together.