Professor Ian Walker:

I have two things to add to that. Senator O'Reilly, coming from a sociology background, will know there is a big body of work on how power structures maintain themselves and the mechanisms through which that happens.

What I am about to say is not a novel observation. Many people have suggested it in the past. One of the specific mechanisms through which the media play a role in this is through slightly dubious notions of journalistic balance.In the context of climate communications, many people have called out the fact this perceived need for balance has led to voices that are, arguably, fundamentally wrong being given equal weighting with voices that are advocating for the need for climate action. This is one of the areas of media and communications in which we could look for changes in a concrete way by addressing the slightly spurious journalistic balance approach, which is, perhaps, emphasising voices of the status quomore than is necessary.

I will briefly mention another point that builds on this. One of the reasons we see so much status quois that none of us has ever known a different world. I have a particular interest in transport and trying to wean people away from motor travel as much as possible. Nobody alive today has ever known a world in which cars do not come first. It is the background against which we all grew up and in which we all learned to be good pedestrians by staying out of the way of motorists and not inconveniencing them on their vital journeys. We did some work a couple of years ago with colleagues in Bristol and Edinburgh in which we tried to measure this cultural blind spot. We asked a nationally representative sample of the UK population a series of questions. People were randomly given one of two versions of the survey. We either gave them a version of the questions that asked about driving or a version in which a couple of words were changed such that the question was the same but about something else. For example, when we asked, "Is it okay to smoke in populated areas where other people have to breathe cigarette fumes?", the nation very clearly said, "No, that is not okay." When we asked, "Is it okay to drive in populated areas where other people have to breathe the car fumes?", everybody said, "Oh, yes, that is absolutely fine." We have a cultural blind spot on this issue. The question was the same but as soon as we mentioned cars, people did not see the problem.

It is against this background that we have to deal with these matters. People are not viewing these messages and issues dispassionately and objectively. There are huge weights of inertia in our cultural perception of the issues that are contributing to these kinds of status quobiases.