Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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The purpose of this morning's session is to have a discussion on the role of communications with regard to the climate action challenge we face as it extends to all issues of the communications challenge, including media and advertising. On behalf of the committee, I welcome Dr. David Robbins, Dublin City University, DCU; Professor Pete Lunn, the behavioural research unit, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and Professor Ian Walker who joins us from Swansea University. All are very welcome.

I remind the witnesses of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If a witness's statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that the witnesses comply with any such direction. For our witness who is attending remotely from outside the Leinster House campus, there are limitations to parliamentary privilege. As such, the witness may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness who is physically present would. Members of the committee are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. If members are joining from their offices online, I ask them to confirm that they are present in the Leinster House complex prior to making their contributions.

Dr. David Robbins:

The committee is well aware of the challenges Ireland faces in the transition to a low-carbon and sustainable society and economy. Yet, the general public has no real understanding of the scale of the changes coming for the big systems of agriculture, transport, and energy or of the changes they will be asked to make in their daily lives. Reports from the citizens’ assembly and the Joint Committee on Climate Change have called for better communication to bring the public along on this transition. The news media will play a central part when it comes to the success or failure of Ireland to meet the relatively ambitious targets it has set itself. Why? As the Reuters Institute Digital News Report Shows, it is to the media that people turn when they want to find out more about climate change. Wolfgang Blau, founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, says that the task of informing people about climate change has fallen to the media whether they want it or not.

Climate change used to be a geoscience problem. Now it is a communications problem. The question I am most often asked is something along the lines of "Why don't the media cover climate change more often?". How often do they cover it? The answer is that we do not really know because nobody is tracking the data on this. My research shows that over the ten years between 2007 and 2016, less that 1% of print news coverage was devoted to climate. A 2014 report found that RTE’s coverage was low and sporadic. Coverage in provincial newspapers, to the extent that we know the coverage levels, seems to be extremely low. Ireland’s coverage experiences wild peaks and troughs. It soars when there is a Conference of the Parties, COP, or an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, report, and fades away to almost nothing at other times. This is true of coverage everywhere but while Irish coverage follows the same patterns as elsewhere, levels are lower than in the rest of Europe. We know that there is a demand for climate and environmental coverage, but news organisations need to be creative in how they present it.

From a journalist's perspective, climate change is the story from hell. It is extremely complex and involves research from multiple scientific and social science disciplines. It does not fit neatly into what journalists usually define as news. It is often slow-moving, repetitive, data-heavy, long-term in nature and involves dealing with scientists.

Now if you take this already difficult story and drop it into a newsroom that has no environmental correspondent and where the budget is being cut. One where the general news reporters are not trained to understand climate change, and do not know who to talk to or what questions to ask. As we all know, the media sector is struggling. Its advertising revenue has been decimated by the tech platforms. Revenues from digital advertising and subscriptions have not made up the shortfall, so cuts have had to be made. According to Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post, journalists must cover climate change like it is the only story that matters. Just when they are needed most, however, they are least equipped to rise to the challenge.

Over the past year, I have been working with news organisations on broadening and deepening their climate coverage. In my experience, most reporters and editors want to play their part in this story. They want to be able to do their jobs, inform people, hold stakeholders to account, investigate, explain and debate, but they need help. They need help to understand climate science. Every reporter needs to know about the greenhouse effect, about the difference between what a 1.5°C world and a 2°C or 3°C world looks like and about carbon budgets. They need help to break out of the automatic, reflexive ways they have of covering issues, and to see other ways of approaching and framing climate change. They also need help to hire a specialist environment correspondent, but at the same time help to spread climate, biodiversity, and sustainability to all other areas of the newsroom. What we need is a nationwide climate literacy programme for journalists. We need bursaries, grants or other subsidies for news organisations to hire specialist environment correspondents. We need funding for special projects, such as COP coverage, investigations and special programmes. We also need a news agency that can provide rolling environmental news coverage to local and community radio and provincial papers. This is something we are looking at in DCU. The Commission on the Future of Media has already agreed that court reporting, local council coverage, and some news coverage need to be publicly funded. Why not climate too?

Dr. Pete Lunn:

Many thanks to the committee for the opportunity to present evidence on the communication issues surrounding climate action. As the head of the ESRI's behavioural research unit, I see my primary role here as supplying information on the evidence base that might be used to improve communication about climate policy.

I want to start by making two observations. First, the policy challenge we face here is unique. The reduction in emissions planned to tackle climate change envisages societal level change of a scope and speed that is unprecedented. As well as the changes to how we generate and use energy that have recently received so much attention, the plan is to change how we travel, how our communities are laid out, how we eat, how firms produce, what we build and how our land is used. There is no other policy area like it.

Second, when it comes to meeting this challenge, while it is natural that we turn to the social and behavioural sciences for help in getting the public to engage with climate action, there are yawning gaps in the available research evidence. This claim, coming as it does from a behavioural science researcher, requires some explanation. Much research has been done on public opinion on and attitudes to climate change, including whether the public believes that humans are causing climate change and whether they support certain mitigation policies. Work has been done too on barriers to individual behaviour change and interventions to promote pro-environmental behaviour, such as purchasing more expensive but more efficient appliances, walking or cycling instead of taking the car or taking the time to recycle household waste properly. What is lacking, however, is an evidence base on whether and how people will accept proposed changes to the systems and communities that surround them. Most importantly, these include changes to taxes and pricing structures. There will also be changes to the use of road space, the available food to eat, our landscapes, the way to run a car, traditional farming practices, the ease of long-distance travel, the way to heat a home, and doubtless more. In short, public policy is asking people not only to change many of their daily habits and individual decisions but also to accept rapid changes to the world around them which in the past tended to occur only over decades, generally as a result of technological advances. In my view, we lack evidence on when and how people will and will not embrace societal change on this scale.

One well-established finding of behavioural science is that, as a general rule, unless they are suffering, people prefer not to change. In the scientific literature, this is called status quobias. It should be noted that this is a profoundly sensible human behaviour. Individuals have learned to trust long-standing systems and to be wary of people who trumpet some better way. Just as democracy is a mechanism for distributing power to prevent damage caused by narcissistic or despotic leaders, mostly, but not always, with success, status quobias is a mechanism of instinctive resistance that individuals and communities use to prevent damage to their way of life. We can already see resistance to many of the changes required for strong climate action, such as opposition to active travel initiatives, carbon taxes on energy, greener farming practices, pedestrianisation, wind turbines, road pricing or restrictions on turf cutting.

The themes are often similar. Opponents of climate policy will say “we know we have to cut emissions, we just don’t want to do it like this”, or “there hasn’t been enough consultation”, or “why is it always us who gets picked on?” As well as status quobias, this last refrain speaks to people’s instinctive understanding that the response to climate change should be collective. None of us wants to be the one making a sacrifice unless we can see that others are making sacrifices too. Even where a specific change has medium-term or long-term benefits, accepting the upheaval and uncertainty inherent in change feels like a sacrifice that should be shared.

The solution to the collective action problem posed by climate change is also different from most other collective action problems, such as the public response to the recent pandemic. In that case, although the effects were not equally felt, everyone was essentially asked to make the same sacrifices for the public good. With climate action the required change is different for different people, depending on where they live, how they make their living and what activities they undertake. This constitutes an example of what I mean by gaps in research. As far as my team can see no one has yet researched how to boost co-operation in collective action problems that require disparate actions. We have just begun to do so. Nevertheless, there are helpful research findings available to us now. For one thing, in Ireland we are fortunate not to be plagued by climate change denial. The large majority of people in Ireland believe in human-caused climate change. A large majority are also worried about it and want more to be done, especially by government. This is true of people young and old, living in both urban and rural communities. In other words, the research shows that fundamental attitudes are not the problem. Getting public buy-in for climate action is not about winning hearts and minds to the seriousness of the problem. That battle is already won. It is about getting people to engage with and embrace the specific changes needed to cut emissions. Our research suggests this cannot be left to individual choice. The public is skilled at recognising when a behaviour is good or bad for the environment, but we find that people are not at all good at understanding which specific actions are most beneficial. The calculation of carbon footprints is far too complicated to guide individual behaviour. System change in the form of taxes and subsidies, rules and regulations and changes to public infrastructure are essential. The main challenge is not to get individuals to change to greener behaviour, but rather to change to greener systems that individuals can support and engage with.

For the population to accept such changes, the evidence suggests that belief in the effectiveness of a specific change matters. People want to know that it will make a difference. This means that demonstration may be an important element in getting people to change. Where one community has successfully changed its land use, started a community energy scheme or embraced active travel, we need to find ways to communicate that success to other communities. We need to demonstrate how the change can be beneficial. Where taxation shifts supply and demand people need to see successful greener technologies in action, as well as traditional but polluting technologies in decline. Our research has recorded public support for the principle that the polluter pays, but this may not translate to support for specific policies. Demonstrations of the benefits, as well as costs, of enforcing this principle will be needed.

There are interesting questions about the role of the media here. As a former journalist I know how much easier it is to tell and sell a story of failure rather than a story of success. To conclude, while we have some useful evidence about how best to communicate the need for change and to support collective action, this is evidence that we can use better. The task is great and our evidence base is not yet good enough to meet the communication challenge presented by climate change. Of course it is hardly surprising to hear a researcher who says we can use evidence better and that we desperately need more research, but that makes it no less true.

Professor Ian Walker:

I am a professor of environmental psychology and head of the School of Psychology at Swansea University in Wales. I specialise in traffic safety, human aspects of the construction industry, energy consumption and water consumption. I also specialise in sustainable behaviours, particularly transport choices. I have tended to focus on behavioural influences that are unconscious or low-awareness, such as habits, and the way our social and infrastructural surroundings shape our actions. I have worked on UK Government projects like the Department for Transport’s climate change segmentation research. I am also an adviser on projects like the Department for Transport’s future transport zones trial and the west of England combined authority’s active travel social prescribing project. Along with industry and local government partners, I was part of a consortium that won a national UK award for work on energy practices in low-income households. I have also worked on relevant projects at the European level, most recently the €5m Horizon 2020 FORESEE project on resilient transport infrastructure.

The role of media and communications in influencing climate change action will depend to a large extent on what specific behaviour is being considered. For example, although encouraging people to drive less and to fix a leaking toilet both have climate implications, the two behaviours involve quite different psychological and social processes. I look forward to discussing specific examples with the committee. However, in advance of our discussion I have summarised two particular themes that cut across my work and which I hope might be useful as background information.

First, routines and habits are an important part of everyday behaviour and this is not always appreciated by those who try to influence behaviour through communications. A habit is an action that is triggered automatically when we are in a specific environment. If we carry out the same behaviour in the same setting many times, after a while we stop thinking about it and effectively delegate the decision to the environment. For example, I suspect that upon entering your bathroom this morning, you more or less unconsciously repeated the same sequence of actions that you perform every morning in that same bathroom. If you travelled to work today, I doubt you weighed up the pros and cons of each travel mode available to you and checked the timetables for every public transport option. It is more likely that you automatically made the familiar journey the same way as every other day without a great deal of thought. This tendency for everyday behaviours to become habitual has important implications for behaviour change communications. Presenting people with new information when they are in a habitual state is very unlikely to change their behaviour, since that behaviour is not the product of a deliberate, rational thought process that takes into account what they know. Once we are in a habitual state, we are not only less likely to seek out new information about the behaviour in question, but when new information is presented to us it tends to act like water off a duck’s back. Is there anything I could tell you today that would truly be likely to change your actions in the bathroom tomorrow morning?

More positively, because habitual behaviours are triggered by specific familiar environments, disruptions to those environments provide us with an opportunity. There is a body of research showing that disruptive lifestyle events, which change the context within which we act, can break habits and open short windows of time in which we are more likely to act on new information. For example, if you move home, it is simply impossible to autopilot to work and you are forced to think anew about how you will make the journey. At this point you are more likely to act on new information. A notable opportunity for communications, which to date seems to have been largely overlooked, is that for almost every major disruptive life event that people experience, such as moving home, starting a new job, having a child, buying a car or retiring, we literally inform the government when it is happening to us, often in advance. This means government might have an opportunity to target behaviour change communications with far more precision than today.

The second broad theme that cuts across my work concerns the separate roles of motivation and knowledge in shaping sustainable behaviour. In many situations where we want people to act differently, we simultaneously need to tell people what they should do and why they should do it. A common communication mistake is to address these two things in isolation. This is a point that has also been noted in public health and traffic safety communications. As I write this statement my home energy meter is telling me that my electricity consumption is costing me a lot of money. This is motivating me a great deal, but the meter’s display is doing literally nothing to tell me how I can act to solve the problem, only that the problem exists. It is like somebody shouting “there’s an emergency,” and then simply running away. I suggest that many climate communications either do something similar or they do the inverse. They tell people what they should do differently without properly explaining why it is important. Research I have done with my colleagues has shown that messages combining what people should do and why they should do it can be much more effective than either message in isolation, especially when those elements are framed in a way that is meaningful to the recipient.

In a trial of this approach, we cut household heating energy by 22% without any loss of comfort and increased people's energy literacy in the process.

These two themes do not cover all of the areas in which I work but they are relevant in the context of the brief outline of the committee's remit that I was given. I look forward to the opportunity to explore these topics further with members.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Professor Walker for his opening statement. I will now invite members to pose questions. It was agreed earlier that we would take eight minutes for questions and answers and then move on. The first member to indicate was Deputy Alan Farrell, who will be followed by Deputy Cronin.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thank our witnesses for coming in. This is fascinating stuff. The psychology of messaging is so important but it is not taken on board by a lot of people. If we reflect on the title of today's discussion, which refers to the role of media and communications, it is the case that the media has a responsibility to report information objectively. I will take one example from today, because it is topical and was covered in both newspapers and on radio, namely, the ESRI research detailed on the front page of The Irish Times. The headline belies this conversation and highlights the difficulty we have. I am not for one moment blaming the author or the newspaper but the automatic default is to focus on the big ticket item that gets the attention of the reader rather than on the underlying message, which is far more important. The headline tells us that under-24s favour a domestic flight ban and car-free zones but the body of research that was done is far more important than that headline suggests. Therein lies the problem that we as policymakers and legislators must focus on in the future.

Dr. Robbin's reference to a publicly-funded journalistic focus on climate change is not so much the elephant in the room but the thing that we really need to promote. There is an inherent fear, right across the board, that permeates right down to very small issues like car-free streets, for instance. There was huge opposition to this when it was trialled in my own home town of Malahide but the outcome was really positive. It changed behaviours almost instantly. However, it has negative connotations in certain parts of the community because of the inconvenience it causes, notwithstanding the massive environmental and safety benefits.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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That is two minutes.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thought I had eight minutes.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Yes, you do but unfortunately the clock is not working so I am just indicating the time----

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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That definitely was not six minutes.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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No, it was two minutes.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Okay. I thought you said I only had two minutes left and I was in a panic.

To go back to the focus of this morning's session, do our guests have a view on how the State would structure the public funding of the publication of reliable, trustworthy sources of information on climate change and on how individuals can make a big change?

There must also be a focus on education. I have requested previously that climate change would become a curriculum subject in our education system at both primary and secondary level. That would promote a new generation of change makers and future policymakers who will understand and not have to deal with the misdirections that we are often led down, either by community or political leaders, or otherwise, as to what is important and what we should be focusing on. I would welcome some general comments from all three of our guests on my remarks.

Dr. David Robbins:

On the funding question, it might be an idea to use the new media commission as a means of directing funding for special projects such as coverage of COPs and so on. Media organisations could apply through the media commission for funding to send journalists to cover special projects. There would be a resistance to direct State intervention in the media market by having a kind of public servant approach, whereby somebody is employed by the Government as an environment correspondent in a newsroom. Funding has to be at arm's length, either through the new media commission or some other body set up to administer those funds.

To go back to the Deputy's opening remarks about the headline in the newspaper today, in my experience of dealing with the five or six media organisations with which I have been working, there is a huge need for climate literacy, as I said in my statement earlier, but there is also a need for literacy on the other side, on the science side, about how the media works, how journalists go about their business and how they communicate. The norms of science vis-à-visthe norms of journalism are almost like oil and water. Scientists need to be trained in how to deal with the media and put their research out there in a way that does not obscure their findings or the import of their research. We have to remember that the media are not an arm of Government. This is an independent sector of its own that has its own norms and its own way of doing things. Often it does not operate in the way that we would like but we must understand the way the media work, while also encouraging them to change the way they approach this problem. We must start from a position of understanding how the media do things.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I want to add to what Dr. Robbins has said about the importance of independence, which might be expected of an ESRI researcher who used to work for the BBC. The independence of any process that is using public money to train journalists and making absolutely sure that is not perceived in any way to have an agenda would be very important. It would actually require more than independence; it would also require diversity of input to that training from multiple scientific communities and disciplines to make sure that it was something that was perceived to be absolutely independent and above board. Something like that could very easily backfire and be perceived as having an agenda and it would be vital that it did not. I would echo that point and even take it a little further.

I apologise but I am going to disappoint the Deputy a little on the education idea because the evidence is not particularly supportive of environmental education interventions. They do not work very well. Increasingly, children have been exposed to more and more environmental education at school, including in Ireland, but when that has been evaluated in terms of their later beliefs, attitudes and environmental behaviours, what we find is that those educational interventions have, at best, marginal impacts. The best way to understand that it is to think about how much we recall of what we were taught at school. Studies show that we recall somewhere in the region of 10% to 15% of what we are taught at school. When we are children, almost all of it comes across as being important, with adults telling us that it really matters, has an ethical dimension and so on. The problem is that children do not actually retain a lot of that information, which is why, when we study it later, we find that the impact of them being taught it is only marginal. This is not just about environmental education. There are all sorts of policy areas that believe stronger education is a panacea, including financial literacy, for example, as well as various issues like diet, health and so on. A lot of these things are taught in schools. Indeed, they are taught pretty well in schools but they do not have big impacts on people's behaviour in later life. What is really telling is that there is no substitute for communication to adults, via public debate, through the media and from places like this.

Professor Ian Walker:

I would like to briefly add to both responses. I agree with the previous speakers to a large extent. In terms of public funding, it becomes difficult in the context of the scale of media funding. I believe Ireland's advertising budget is over €1 billion per year, a substantial part of which will come from consumptive and extractive industries. Given its scale, I do not see how State funding could ever hope to replace that. It might be worth doing some kind of audit to assess how much of the media's advertising revenue comes from industries that would be challenged through climate messaging.

As for education, I very much agree with Dr. Lunn for two reasons. There is the very simple reason that evidence suggests that individual education has limits. I agree also with what Dr. Lunn said in his opening statement about our being far better off exploring structural shifts rather than individual shifts. I back that up from just a pragmatic, common-sense perspective. As to what we are trying to do with education, I understand that the population of Ireland is around 5 million people. If we take an educational approach, we are effectively saying we should address this problem by persuading 5 million people individually, whereas it might be far more effective to persuade one or two people who have influence over the environment within which those other people act. We could therefore get more bang for our buck by persuading the right people rather than the fairly hopeless job of trying to persuade 5 million individuals.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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I thank all the witnesses for their contributions. I am very interested in and passionate about this area. My primary degree is in sociology, so I very much appreciated all the contributions. The witnesses have added to our knowledge already through their contributions. It is important to separate the advertising from the reporting and the policymaking. As Dr. Robbins said, we do not direct journalists, and there has to be a sense of independence, but we do put out press releases. As Professor Walker said, we can look at what the stages in that disruptive behaviour are and either put out press releases based on that or formulate policy in a way that will match the stages in people's lives. I do not think either of those things are being done at the moment, so I would like to see that in a report.

Are journalists, from Dr. Robbins's perspective, looking for ways to communicate on climate that will make it interesting? My view is they want high ratings and do not want to be criticised for not communicating about climate. Sometimes, therefore, the reporting that comes out is quite boring and does not catch on among the public so it does not satisfy the requirement of journalism that it develop an understanding among the general population. There might be opportunities there for some kind of training that would look at disruptive behaviour as a way to communicate from each event. From COP, for example, I could reach a certain percentage of the population by talking about babies and the impact on them because I know that a certain percentage of the population has small babies. I could put out another press release knowing that a certain number of people are between the ages of 16 and 25 and, therefore, in my communications on COP, put out something that will reach that age group. We could be much more effective from the point of view of both ratings and communication if we were to do that.

What is the impact of institutions trying to recreate themselves and therefore not wanting change themselves? Dr. Lunn spoke about the general population not liking change and backing the status quoand gave very good reasons that is the case, such as it is the appropriate way to behave as human beings. It is also the case, however, that there are groups in society that benefit from the continuation of the status quo, not on an individual level, but it is the policymakers themselves who have an inherent benefit to gain in things continuing pretty much as they are. What place does that have in the way things are communicated? Do the witnesses have information on that?

Dr. David Robbins:

As for the aspect the Senator raised of the different approaches to covering climate change and different takes on it, I have been trying to emphasise that in sessions with media organisations. Journalists have automatic, default settings they go to: the economic angle, how much this will cost us all, and conflict such as the Greens versus somebody else or political conflict. That is the way their minds have been trained to work over years and years of working in newsrooms. I have been trying to get them to pause and to ask if that is the best way to frame or to tell this story. What Senator O'Reilly's remarks lead to is the widening of the environment beat into all other parts of the newsroom, that is, not just the environment correspondent but also the business and lifestyle correspondents. There are all the other ways of telling stories about climate change and sustainability that are not the automatic, reflexive ways of the political correspondents or, often, the environment correspondents. We need some way to insert ourselves into newsrooms and to say, "Hang on a second and question what you are doing. There are other ways to tell this story." That is what I have been trying to do in a small way, but it needs a more strategic intervention.

I will pass over to the other witnesses to discuss the other aspects.

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.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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There is a message there for politicians, I think.

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.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Senator O'Reilly is out of time but I will allow her to come back in briefly.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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The point this raises is that we must communicate in a way that enables people to receive the information. There is sometimes a tendency for people who think they know better to communicate in an ineffective way to the many people who are quite willing to go along with the status quo. I am not sure that is getting us anywhere.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I was really looking forward to this meeting because it is very interesting to focus on these issues. My first question is to Dr. Robbins. He spoke about how the media sector is struggling, with advertising revenue decimated by technology platforms. Many young people get their news from those platforms. There is an issue regarding greenwashing advertising and the conflict of interest that must arise when television and radio stations rely on advertising as a huge form of income. In addition, much of the media is owned by companies that may be resistant to the huge and profound social changes we will have to make. Advertising drives us to consume more and more stuff we do not really need. I wonder how the work that is needed can be done while media are trying to give us news but are reliant on advertising to pay the people who are giving us the news. I am worried about that. Dr. Robbins said news reporters and editors want to be able to do their jobs and hold stakeholders to account. How can they do so when they are so reliant on advertising?

The point about habits was very interesting. The reason people go to the same toilet or sink is that our ape brain tells us doing so is what keeps us safe. During the Covid period, we were all pushed from using public transport and had to use our cars because doing so was safer, rather than breathing in air on overfilled public transport. I had a meeting last night with young people in Maynooth University at which we talked about how unreliable public transport is outside Dublin. I am a Deputy representing Kildare North. I asked whether any of these young people intends to buy a car. None of them does. I have asked this question a few times of a number of young people. They all realise that cars are not a good idea for the environment and the future but they cannot rely on public transport. We politicians will have to get better at addressing that issue.

I was interested in the observation that we have to inform the Government of many of the huge issues we make in our life, such as increasing our family or moving jobs. There is a lost opportunity in that. Will Dr. Robbins respond to some of those points?

Dr. David Robbins:

The Deputy asked the $64,000 question when she spoke about the influence on media of its reliance on advertising. There is a lot of research into the sociology of journalism and how journalists see themselves. In some ways, they see themselves as quite like academics. They carry out research, teach and might move to different universities but they have their own professional norms and independence. They have their own professional code of ethics and their own trade union. They see themselves as having professional guardrails in place against commercial interference by proprietors. It is a danger to which they are very alive. On the other hand, there is no doubt that such interference happens and can pervade the culture of organisations. I was working in the Independent Group when it was owned by Tony O'Reilly and when it was owned by Denis O'Brien. Nothing was ever said but there is a culture in that organisation and it something of which journalists in all organisations are aware. It is still an open question as to whether their professional norms are strong enough to guard against that.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I have another question for Dr Robbins. He said he has been working with news organisations on broadening and deepening their climate coverage. Was that engagement mainly Dublin-centred? Many people get their news from the local radio station.

Dr. David Robbins:

I was also involved in the broadcasting sustainability network of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, dealing with local and community radio. Those local media have a huge role to play in communicating the climate crisis. The consultancy I engaged in, which the Deputy asked about, was with the Irish Examiner, RTÉ, Bauer Media and all the members of the BAI, including national, local and community broadcasters and their management. The consultation was not just with Dublin parties.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I was disappointed with what Dr. Lunn said about education. I thought the reason I did not litter was that it was drummed into us in school that we should not throw anything on the ground or we would be litterbugs. When the change in legislation on the use of seat belts came in, it was my children who forced me to remember to adhere to that. Now I do it automatically. I am very upset about that point.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I can only say to the Deputy, "Do not shoot the messenger." A large number of studies have been published on this issue. We have done a bit of this work ourselves in the behavioural research unit but I am referring to a large number of international studies that looked at the long-term effects of educational interventions in schools. The news is just not very good about how effective they are. I suspect the Deputy's attitude to littering may have more to do with early punishment and parental influence than it does with the factual knowledge that was pushed towards her in the classroom, but I could be wrong.

Professor Ian Walker:

I would love to tell the Deputy about the study I did in Wales a few years ago, which showed that our very psychologically informed anti-littering campaign led to an increase in the amount of littering that went on from passing cars.

Just to pick up on the transitions thing I was talking about earlier, which the Deputy referred to, this feels like it is important. Speaking anecdotally for a second, I live on the edge of a city and because I have spent years travelling into that city using buses and bicycles, and have never really driven, the thought of driving in genuinely feels quite daunting. I would not know what an appropriate route was, I have no idea where I could store the car when I got in and so I am very unlikely to try and drive into the city even though I have access to a car. I am very aware from speaking to other people who live near me, that they feel the opposite. As a result of spending years driving into that city, they find that easy and find the idea of getting onto a bus daunting and difficult. We really could deal with this by addressing people before those driving habits get established as was suggested. There has been work in other countries. I am aware of work in Germany, Japan and places like this, targeting people at the times of those residential relocations. When people are seen to be moving into a new house, they are given free public transport for six weeks and information about the routes, with the intention that at the end of that period, those habits become established and there is no barrier perceived to hopping on the bus and going into town. By that point, hopefully the good habits are well enough established that the idea of getting into the car feels like it does for me: quite daunting and off-putting. If we are going to do things at an individual level, these targeted intelligence-led approaches to set up good habits might be quite a useful approach.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their very interesting presentations. I question whether we can reasonably expect journalists to drive change. Government seeks change, I do not think journalists see it as their job to support the Government in that. What we need from journalism is assurance that false facts will be challenged and not that it will get into the job of the Government in trying to nudge people towards particular behaviour. Maybe I am wrong and journalism sees itself differently.

I am a little bit surprised we are not hearing more about the theory of nudge in behavioural activity. I know the British Government set it up and are doing practical things like opting out instead of opting in. We have put in smart meters now in 1 million homes but homeowners have to opt in to avail of the impact of smart meters. We are told this is because of general data protection regulation, GDPR, but opting out would create a normal expectation that people were going to manage their electricity. That is the sort of thing. The person chosen to be the messenger on behalf of the Government is important. If someone like me goes on and says people should be doing something, you know how people will react but if it is a football star or a personality, there will be a very different reaction due to the credibility of the person and the profile. Other things such as creating games, recognition of good behaviour and reinforcing that. I would have thought the witnesses would be much more into that sphere rather than us hoping journalists will do the job for us.

The big takeaway I got is that when there are big changes in one's own life, there is a big opportunity for the Government to present options. Maybe Deputy Alan Farrell's point about the cycling lanes and the reorganisation of traffic can be that but there is also the birth of a baby, moving house or a whole lot of things that might have an effect. The big question I have to ask is what makes a regulation work. We are all saying we are going to have to regulate, people are not spontaneously do this and education is not going to get them do it. What guidance would the witnesses give the Government on designing a good regulation? That would be a useful conversation and I would like to hear the guests' views.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I will happily take that question. I suspect the "why are you not talking about nudging remark" might have been partly aimed at me given that I am the head of the behavioural research unit at the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The UK is ahead of us. I understand that they have made bigger efforts. It is not singling Dr. Lunn out.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

Yes and no, Deputy. I am going to stick up for our domestic production in this regard. There is quite an argument within behavioural science and behavioural economics about the power of nudging because many nudges, while they have statistically significant effects, have really small effects and we are talking about a very large degree of change here. You are not going to nudge people to solve climate change; you can make marginal differences through nudging. The primary things that will solve climate change are large system changes which include changes to prices, taxation, and regulations and for me, the bigger role of behavioural science actually is how people interface with those systems. How do they understand and accept them? Do they perceive them to be fair? How can we describe them in ways that improve their understanding because we are asking radical change of them to interface with systems they may resist? That is the more important role of behavioural science rather than nudging people to recycle a little better or to get a smart meter. Smart meters are actually a really good example of this. The Deputy is totally right about default effects and they are very powerful. If you make it the default that you get a smart meter and you have to opt out, more people will get smart meters. We know this in multiple walks of life. Actually, getting people to get a smart meter is not the thing that has climate impact. What really will have climate impact is do they understand the tariff that they are on and can they respond to the information that is fed to them - the feedback that Professor Walker referred to earlier. That is where the behavioural science impact really is because unless they actually interface with that smart meter in a sophisticated way that changes their energy use, having one makes no difference. Nudging them to get one is not the key.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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No, they have one. They have to opt in to having a tariff choice, that is the point. They get a smart meter automatically and it is fitted in their door but then we are told at one stage that only 4% of households had taken up the opportunity to manage their energy. If the default was that people did not get the tariff change, you might get a better outcome.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I accept the point but we have done research on how people respond to smart meter tariffs and they find them incredibly difficult to understand. If we give them a pattern of usage that is fair usage and we give them smart meter tariffs and tell them to pick the right tariff for them on that pattern of usage, a large majority of people cannot do it. We published a paper on energy policy on this. Why can people not do it? It is just too complicated and difficult for people in ordinary life to do. The problem is that the behavioural science is how we can simplify that problem in a way that genuinely affects people's behaviour and drops emissions. The answer to that has to be some kind of internal feedback system within the house that is simplified and that they can understand and that we put money into researching and testing in order that people can change their behaviour in simple and easy ways. The problem is that even giving them the correct economic incentives, as if were, is not enough if they cannot interface with the system in a way that allows them to change behaviour. That is the reason there is an argument within behavioural science about the power of nudging and you can probably get from this which side of it my unit and I tend to sit on. Nudging is an important thing, and it has made a real difference to the impact of behavioural science in policy but nudging is not going to help us solve climate change in a major way. It has got to be about how people interface with system change.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My second question was on how you design good system change.

Professor Ian Walker:

I will jump in here, if I may, because I want to very strongly endorse what Professor Lunn just said. I really strongly agree with this. The anti-littering campaign of a few years ago which I spoke about a moment ago, used classic nudge techniques. It deliberately used classic nudge approaches, which completely backfired and increased the amount of litter people were throwing out of their cars. Critically, you have never heard about that study because it did not work and therefore, has not got out into public awareness. There is a survivor bias towards the nudging studies, in that people hear about the ones that happen to work and the ones that do not work are not heard about and consequently, it might look as if the approach is more successful than it really is. I can actually talk for hours about nudge so I am going to have to keep myself off that topic for any longer.

Just a brief note about defaulting, if you look at any city street, the default way of travelling is to walk and yet most people are not doing that. Most people are spending large amounts of money, time and effort in order to drive a car, therefore maybe defaulting is something we should be a little more cautious about. With energy tariffs in particular, which is something I have worked on, it is actually really complicated. We did some work about three years ago looking at the potential for energy tariffs to help people shift the time of consumption away from peaks, which is something there is a lot of interest in at the moment.

We would really like people to shift their consumption away from the 5 o'clock to 8 o'clock period. What we found when we asked people to work with prototype time-of-use tariffs was that there are so many structural and, especially, social barriers. People were very reluctant to consider changing the times of their consumption in response to a tariff if it was socially abnormal to do so. For example, they would not consider eating an evening meal at a late time because that is just not what is done. They would not do something if it did not meet social obligations or if they felt like they would become bad hosts or would disturb their neighbours. All those things were very complex social barriers to interacting with tariffs in order to change behaviour and were another really good reason we will not solve this at a large scale through individual behaviour change.

Dr. David Robbins:

I wish to add just a brief note in response to Deputy Bruton's remark as to whether we can expect the media to be leaders and that it is up to the Government to lead on this. I think what we can expect journalists to do is to include the climate context much more than they do now in stories about business or the weather. The director of news and current affairs at RTÉ last year kind of apologised that it needed to do better on linking multiple stories to climate change. There is some research on how environmental journalists in particular see themselves as having a critical advocacy stance, so I think we can expect some leadership. Certainly, the sector is ready to play its part but I mentioned the various areas where it needs help. What we can expect it to do is to put forward the climate context much more frequently than it does at the moment.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

Deputy Bruton mentioned I had not answered the second question, so I will have a pop at it. I will be careful because what I am about to say is not as strongly evidence-based as what I have said so far. The Deputy asks me what makes a good regulation. That is an open-ended question to which there is not really an evidence-based answer. If, however, one takes some information from evidence, I think one can have a stab at it.

In the climate space there is a point to be made here. One of the real problems with climate policy is how fair it is perceived to be. It is clearly the case that we have to move towards a world where the polluter pays, but moving towards such a world tends to hit poorer households worse and tends to hit particular industries harder than others. That is perceived as very unfair by the sectors that and the people who feel they are picked on by the policy. When it comes to regulation, it might be good if we were to give advance notice of technologies that are polluting and that we intend to phase out and that we give dates for that. For example, some countries have said that after a certain date no diesel or petrol cars, will be for sale. There are some places where people have said no gas boilers will be fitted after a certain time. Why do I favour that? I do so because it totally changes the economic incentives. For a period, instead of trying to lobby against a regulation, the companies have a competitive incentive to try to adapt to the regulation and to put out the best alternative products. In that way one aligns the market and the economic forces towards abiding by the regulation and improving the green technology, rather than lobbying to stop the old technology being put to one side. That is important. I also think that has behavioural effects because it focuses people on something that appears to be fairer and more reasonable. We can say that we know that this is hitting some sectors harder than others but that we have given people four or five years to put their house in order. People will be able to see that that is a fairer thing to do than to impose something suddenly or for something to go one way or the other after a fight, for many people to go out of business and so on.

That is not a purely evidence-based view. It is a matter of better aligning the economic and behavioural forces and putting in place strong regulation that is credible, whereby it will be introduced by a certain date but people will be given time to adjust.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Thank you for that, Dr. Lunn. I turn now to Deputy Bríd Smith, who is joining us from her office in the Houses of the Oireachtas campus.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the witnesses for their introductory statements.

I wish to take up the line of argument Deputy Cronin took in respect of media and advertising. What do the witnesses think of the embedment of the fossil fuel and related industries in media circles, that is, the extent to which media outlets are reliant on, for example, Ryanair, which is opening up new travel routes, or the sale of cars, whether Volvo or whatever other company? So many of those companies advertise their cars on the telly. You watch a "Prime Time" documentary or one on RTÉ or whatever other station about the impact of climate change in the worst affected areas - let us say Pakistan, where recently 30 million people were displaced and thousands lost their lives - and then, straight after that, there are ads for cars, new Ryanair routes opening up or whatever other form of corporate interest. It is a matter of the embedment of that industry in media outlets and media outlets' reliance on those companies' revenues coming in. Do the witnesses, as behavioural psychologists, think that has a major impact on either creating cynicism or negativity or reversing people's understanding of the catastrophe we face and how serious the situation is? If we were to accept that it is as serious as it is, we would not advertise flights, cars or anything else that emits fossil fuels and creates more problems for the planet.

The second matter I will raise is the argument around individual change, how we look at individuals psychologically and how we change their behaviour and the barriers to change. I find it fascinating that we focus so much on that and not on the behaviour of, for example, the CEO of Ryanair or the heads of agribusinesses that emit emissions by growing the herd and refusing to change their practices and sticking rigidly to the agricultural practices we have. Again, you could have a big item on emissions, pollution of waters and so on and then a big advertisement for meat, bacon, pork, beef or whatever else. The witnesses understand what I am getting at. We do not look at the behaviour of CEOs of companies or those clamouring to extend licences for gas exploration. What about their behaviour, their addiction to the profits they make and the behaviour of the industry itself? Are we looking at that and how we might be able to change their behaviour rather than looking at the individual? I think it was Deputy Cronin again who said that she finds that young people are not interested in cars and want to use public transport. That is a good sign for the future. However, there is the behaviour of the business conglomerates that try to push these models on us while at the same time acknowledging, or pretending to acknowledge, that we have a climate catastrophe. Have we looked at their behaviour and what we may do to reverse that? I think - and the witnesses might agree - that if we could change their behaviour, that would have a much bigger impact than trying to change the behaviour of Bríd Smith or any of us sitting in the committee room or outside it.

Dr. David Robbins:

To come back to Deputy Smith on the embedded nature of advertising in the media, I am not a behavioural scientist; I am a media and communications researcher. In my experience, having worked in the media for about 25 years, there was a convention of a Chinese wall between the editorial function and the advertising function. The editorial function would book an ad for, say, a car or an airline. The journalist would produce the paper in which that ad appeared without taking any account of who paid for it or where it would sit. It seems almost naive to believe that that could work but, in my experience, it did work. The journalist had a very strong sense of his or her independence from the commercial side of the house. The commercial operation of the newspaper was almost like a different world from the journalism side.

Having said that, a colleague of mine did an interesting piece of research on RTÉ's coverage of one of the IPCC reports where she coded not only the coverage itself but also the ads that appeared in between in the news bulletins. We got one set of messages about climate from the coverage of the IPCC report, but all the advertising in between was of very carbon-intensive activities.

All the advertising in between was about very carbon-intensive activities. That throws up a wider debate about how we fund the media, public service media in particular, and whether we should require it to depend on advertising at all. It is an interesting question. People consumer advertisements as well as media and they are often getting two contradictory messages.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

The evidence is absolutely clear that advertising persuades. The Deputy is right about that. Specific research carried out on car advertising has shown that it persuades and gives an incorrect perception to people about the benefits of car travel, what it feels like to be in a car, how pleasant it is, how useful it is and so on. Advertising does persuade. It exaggerates the benefits of products, and there is a bucket of research that shows that is true. If one wants to take that on, there is a real case to be made. We regulate advertising on a regular basis and have done so for a long time. We do it, for example, to try to avoid people buying poor financial products and so on. There is a big issue associated with greenwashing and there is a big issue associated with not providing information about the environmental standards of products. There is a question to be asked about whether we need reform of advertising and marketing that takes the latter very seriously and does much more in that space. Certainly, the behavioural science would suggest there is a case to answer in terms of persuasive advertising, greenwashing and the possibility of simplifying environmental information in advertising and marketing in ways that allow consumers to make more informed and greener choices.

When it comes to the focus on the behaviour of CEOs in corporations, speaking as a behavioural scientist, it is extremely difficult because most of them are not very keen to participate in studies in the same way that members of the public are. It is difficult. Nevertheless, one of the reasons that throughout the meeting so far I have stressed the importance of system change rather than individual change is that one of the things we know from the evidence is that people in those positions respond to changes in pricing structures and regulations. If we want to change their behaviour, the way to do that is to change their corporate incentives. If we make their corporate incentives greener, we will get greener behaviour.

Professor Ian Walker:

I will begin by picking up on the question asked by Deputy Bríd Smith, who asked why anyone would want to persuade her. She is one of the most important individuals we could persuade because she is in a position of power and able to act upon some of these things we are hearing about.

I am, predictably, going to agree with Dr. Lunn about advertising. There is a precedent to some extent because France has begun to take some action in this regard. France tried to legislate for warnings on fossil fuel-related industries, such as car adverts. There has been a bit of backsliding on that recently. However, that is something from which the committee might be able to learn. Why are certain industries' advertisements exempt from health warnings when others are not? That is the way to phrase the question.

Another way to approach the issue that would pick up on the idea of commercial incentives might be to learn from the energy industry and, to a certain extent, the water industry, where performance rating certificates and performance ratings are used as a way to drive industry change. The energy ratings one sees on a light bulb, for example, running from A to F, might appear as if they are there to inform the consumer. In reality, they are more there to drive industry incentives and to incentivise the makers of the light bulb to produce more energy efficient light bulbs. Why are industries such as the car industry not subject to those kinds of rating scales that would reveal which models are unnecessarily energy intensive and which models are not in a visible and compulsory way?

The Deputy also said she was surprised or mystified that we keep focusing on individuals when that is clearly not a great way to solve these problems. I strongly recommend to the committee a paper published approximately two years ago by some European researchers and entitled Discourses of Climate Delay. I would be happy to share the details of that with the committee after the meeting. Those researchers identified 12 common arguments or narratives that are used to provide the status quo bias we talked about earlier. They are 12 common arguments or framings that are employed in order to avoid action on climate change. Emphasising the role of the individual and the importance of individual responsibility is second on the list of climate delay tactics.

Dr. David Robbins:

Discourses of Climate Delay by William F. Lamb is something I have been putting in front of journalists to make them aware of these discourses and to allow them to hold the people who are engaging in these discourses to account in the same way they would hold the committee members to account if they came onto a journalist's radio programme. There is a job of work to be done literacy-wise but doing that can allow journalists to identify these discourses and interrogate them properly.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Is there evidence that when we bring this information to journalists, when papers such as the one that has been mentioned are put in front of them and workshops are undertaken, the journalists change their behaviour in how they report on critical climate issues? That might apply to an active travel scheme at a local level or at a higher level.

Dr. David Robbins:

There is no such evidence. There is not a lot of funding available for media research in general. It would be great to be able to do follow-up research on the people who have been to these workshops and so on. There is no answer based on evidence. Anecdotally, from speaking to people who have done the various workshops and so on, there is a huge drive in journalism to ask how the industry approached an issue last year or what the industry normally does in certain cases. Journalists appreciate the prompt to stop and think about these matters. In some of the courses, we have gone outside the box and brought in stuff about eco-cinema and taken different humanities approaches. I thought that was not going to down well with hard, cynical journalists but they loved the array of different ways of thinking about talking about climate change and taking different approaches to it. I was surprised by that.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I am sure all the journalists listening to the meeting are not the ones we are talking about because they do such a good job of reporting on this committee. Perhaps other journalists might pay heed.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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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-----

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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May I interrupt the Senator?

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Am I out of time?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Could the Senator come back in for a second round later? I would like to be fair to all the members. I believe we will have time for a second round.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I will finish with a very quick point, on greenwashing. I would like to hear a little more about how we can resist that. Do we have regulations in this regard? Is it about regulating the phrases and language being used? I would also like to hear a comment on the disinformation that comes with greenwashing.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I had better answer given that the education issue has been raised. I want to be absolutely clear, particularly at this forum. Coming from a strongly pro-education family and as someone who still teaches in two universities, I am not suggesting education makes no difference. Education is incredibly important and makes an enormous difference to people’s lives, not just to what they know but also to their values, attitudes and all the rest of it. What I am saying is that the evidence does not suggest curriculum change is a game-changer for climate change; it suggests the effect of specific changes to the curriculum on people’s later behaviour and environmental values is pretty small. That is all it means. That does not mean education is not important; it is very important. I support green educational interventions to a very considerable degree because the evidence suggests they at least make a bit of a difference. This is very important knowledge for people to have, given the direction the science has gone in recent decades, so I would not oppose it at all; however, I am just suggesting that all the evidence makes it absolutely clear that curriculum change has, at best, a marginal impact.

The Senator’s point on fairness is a really good one. It is in this regard that I highlighted that we have a lack of research. It is remarkable in a way. Maybe we have missed it but I do not believe we have. We have scoured the international research for really good examples of solving collective action problems requiring disparate behaviours – in other words, where somebody somewhere has to change a production process and I have to change the way I heat my home and travel. Somebody somewhere else might have to put up with a change to their landscape, which must now have some infrastructure they did not want. These are all different forms of acceptance that we have to take on board to have changes to systems. To the best of my knowledge, this area is simply not researched at all, and we are starting to try to get stuck into it. The point is a really good one because we know that, with all collective action problems, the perception of fairness is incredibly important. The majority of the public are what we call conditional co-operators. In other words, if you challenge them with a collective action problem, they will do what is right only if they see others doing what is right, if what is right is to make a sacrifice for the public good, or, in the case of pollution, not cause a public bad. Most people will go along with what is required if they believe everyone else is doing so. That means we have to research the fairness issue much better. It also underlines the importance of the session we are having here about communication because, if I am to change my behaviour, I need to know the people who live in other circumstances are also making some sacrifices and changing their behaviour, even if it is in a different way. I need to believe what is being asked of them is equivalent to what is being asked of me if I am a conditional co-operator. Therefore, communication about what people are doing in different walks of life, sectors and living circumstances is incredibly important in achieving a sense of fairness. That much I think we know already.

On greenwashing, better research on what the public do and do not understand is extremely important. What we know at the moment is that the public absolutely cannot make head nor tail of green labelling. That is clear from the evidence. We and others have published information in this regard. We have got to simplify the eco-labelling into forms that people can understand. That can be done. There are studies that show that simple front-of-pack labelling can be effective. We need to move towards harmonised, simple front-of-pack labelling that people can rely on based on the evidence I have seen.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Could I comment on that? Professor Lunn is saying the research has not been done but there is no other issue like that of the climate. He alluded to this in his opening statement. There is no issue as complex and that requires a variety of solutions across the board. While one community might have to accept one solution, another community might have to accept another. We are at the coalface of this, I guess, and we have to figure it out now.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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It is not just about the different communities but also about the different sectors. I gave examples of very large industries. It is telling that when we started talking about businesses, we started talking about incentivising them, whereas businesses need to be told. People need to see them being told. I do not mean small businesses but businesses such as the private-jet rental system, data centres and very large lobbies. We have the power not only to incentivise but also to require in this regard. It is not just about different communities but also about the imbalance.

Could the delegates address the despair issue? Despair is one of the immobilising techniques.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

What concerns me about collective action problems requiring disparate action is that many behavioural findings we know about suggest it is likely that I will overestimate my contribution and underestimate that of others if the latter is different from mine. Not only do we not know that for sure in the climate space, not having really researched it, but we do not know the scale of the effect. Also, we do not know interventions that could potentially counter it. We do not know what behaviours it will be strong with and what kind it will be weak with. We do not know whether it will split on an urban–rural basis or how much identity might play into it.

Professor Ian Walker:

Can I jump in?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Go ahead.

Professor Ian Walker:

I will echo that initial point, which is that obviously education is important. Is it the first thing you would do? There are some well-known complexities that illustrate the problem. There has been some research for example on educating people through myth busting. The research shows that it is often counter productive to take myth busting approaches because by repeating the myth to explain why it is wrong, people just remember the myth. One can actually end up having a counter-intuitive or counter-productive effect through educational approaches at times.

Similarly, it would be desirable if the population had a high level of climate literacy to the point where they were able to work out by themselves what is greenwashing and what is not. A highly climate literate population would see terms such as "self-charging hybrid car" and see it for the greenwashing that it is. However, climate literacy, energy literacy and systems literacy are hugely complicated. We know from research that we and colleagues have done that even knowing where the energy goes in one's home is beyond most people. Most people do not know where their energy is going or how to address that, let alone having the wider literacy to understand all sorts of systems.

There is some hope. One of the nudgy things that have been very successful, and we have done quite a lot on this, is the issue of social norms and learning from others. This is when people hear about success stories, etc. We did work on showers. Showers are wonderful because they are incredibly private and none of us knows what everybody else does. We did some work which showed that if you tell people how abnormal they are, they instantly become more normal. If you tell people that their showers are short, then they start taking longer showers. If you tell people that their showers are long, they start taking shorter showers almost immediately. This is an area where there is an opportunity for media and communications to show people that they are not alone and that they are part of a bigger picture. There is a phenomenon to which Professor Lunn alluded a moment ago, which is called pluralistic ignorance, whereby people have a tendency to believe that they want change but they look around and assume that nobody else wants change because they are not seeing anybody else doing anything. Media and communications can have a powerful role in overcoming this pluralistic ignorance effect by showing that actually most people around you do want change and are doing things and that you are not alone. We could potentially get some consensus through that route. It needs more exploration but it does feel like a promising avenue that builds on sound behavioural science.

Dr. David Robbins:

I will raise a couple of points on the education. Some 500 French journalists recently published a charter on how the media should cover climate change. One of the items on that charter was to take an educational approach. It is something we have done in DCU with the examiner group. We have provided fact boxes on issues that people think that they should know about but are too embarrassed to admit they do not. These are questions such as, "What is climate change?"; "What is the greenhouse effect?"; "What is the circular economy?"; "What is biogenic methane?" and "What is climate justice?". These things are there and they can be dropped into an online article or into print. They are running, standing resources that can be educational. I know that this is different from curriculum reform.

On the subject of greenwashing, there is a huge issue in the media. Again, this comes back to levels of literacy. Most journalists do not know how to interrogate a sustainability report from a major corporation. They do not know the questions to ask. Often, they will go to the environment correspondent and ask if something looks kosher to them. This comes back to the issue of upskilling and literacy development in the media sector.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank all of the speakers. I will pick up on a couple of the topics that we have already been discussing. I want to discuss the impact of messaging on behaviour that can conflict with people's lived experience. Is that counter productive? I am giving the example here of public advertisements at the moment that tell one not use to their clothes dryer, because it is really bad for the environment and we need to all do our bit, particularly given the war effort, etc. For the vast majority of people who live in apartment blocks or in private rental, they have no choice but to use their clothes dryer. This is a matter of the importance of the messaging that is coming out. Particularly, there is an onus on public bodies if they are putting out messaging to look at the regulatory framework and how it relates to people's lived experience and to public services. Again, people are being asked to reduce their car speed, but they can be stuck on the M50 and are motoring home at 15 km/h and are being told to reduce their car speed for more energy efficiency. It is frustrating for people to hear a message that tells them to do one thing, but their lived experience or the infrastructure around them does not allow for it. I am interested to hear about how we go about fixing that.

I want to raise the separation of advertising and journalism. Many contributors have fixated on this, as well as the separation of journalists and their code of ethics. We might look at The Irish Times during the Celtic tiger and the number of adverts for selling houses that it published. That was a huge proportion of its revenue. Then, there were new articles that told people to get on the property ladder. That is why I do not think one can ever really overcome that. These are two issues and it is very hard to square the circle. I heard what Professor Lunn said about regulating advertising. We have a self-regulatory model of advertising in this country, which is the ASAI. Anybody who has ever tried to engage with it - as I have done on numerous occasions when I have reported greenwashing - will know that it takes approximately nine months for a decision to be taken. This is the industry vetting itself. If you are an elected representative they will ask if they can make that information available, but they do not make it available to the public, they make it available to the person who took out the advertisement. Therefore they will make an even stronger case to defend their actions. Do we need some sort of separation from industry and the regulator of advertising to ensure that if you engage with the process that issues such as greenwashing can be properly challenged? There is also the matter of industries. We know that the science is clear on fossil fuels and their impact on climate change. Do we just need to move to bans on certain advertisements like we did with tobacco? I know that Professor Walker spoke about the French example. It is my understanding that France tried to ban advretisements on fossil fuels and watered it down to health warnings. Are there certain sectors that we now just need to ban the advertising of? People have been convinced that SUVs are safer to drive and therefore if you have children you are being told to get an SUV to protect your family. The reality is, however, that all other road users are less safe because of the proliferation of SUVs. I would like to hear views on these points.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

On the Senator's first question, which was on lived experience and messaging, she is completely right. What we know is that in any collective action problem, for people to along with it, to co-operate and to make some sacrifice for the public good, they have to not only believe that everyone else is doing it, they also have to see that the strategy that is being asked of them would work if everybody did it. People are living in apartment blocks where they have no other option to dry their clothes and their clothes are not going to dry indoors.

That kind of advice is not going to meet that requirement, so you are not going to get the collective action you need. This suggests a need for better, evidenced-based communication. It is important to understand that suggesting a strategy to people which they can see will not deliver the outcome asked for will backfire in terms of motivation. There is a load of behavioural science to show that. The Senator is right. We just have to improve the messaging and not do it, instead focusing on the things people can do and can see that if we all do, it makes a difference.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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Or change the regulations to allow people to dry their clothes on balconies.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

On the ads, I have wrestled with getting my head around climate change. I have degrees in neuroscience, psychology and economics . I am now trying to understand engineering, geoscience and climate science. There is no way an advertising regulator can do all that to check the credentials of what is put in an advert as to whether it is good or bad for climate change. Given that it cannot be done, I strongly advocate a regulatory simplification. A good example of this is what the finance industry did when it was clear that major damage was being caused by people buying poor credit products. What did we do? We regulated the concept of annual percentage rate, APR. We said there was a standardised measure that had to be reported in all marketing and communication. Do we have that for climate impact? We do not. Could we move in that direction to simplify matters? Potentially. That goes beyond my expertise, but, from a behavioural point of view, I am sure there is no chance the regulator can understand what it needs to understand to get rid of greenwashing. It is too difficult, so we have to try to standardise and simplify. There is much behavioural evidence to suggest that is effective in getting advertising to better reflect the true value of the product. That is a direction we could consider going in.

Dr. David Robbins:

I will try and answer the point on advertising. There are different perspectives. Many media theorists would argue the media is part of the status quoand is constitutionally set up not to change. They would also stated that the media is interested in perpetuating the economic status quo. Other perspectives show that the individual journalists can work autonomously and effectively within that system. As an ex-journalist, I come down on the side of the journalist but I appreciate the other perspectives. The sector is in a state where advertising is collapsing and moving to the tech platforms. Those in the sector are trying to rethink their business model. It might be an opportunity for us to think about supporting the sector to avoid the perception of advertiser influence.

Professor Ian Walker:

I will not add much because a lot of this has already been said. We need to think about regulating adverts. The key will be to resist the temptation to bring in the industries too much as part of this. We already have issues at European regulation level whereby emissions targets for motor vehicles only include certain parts of the emissions. A car has to be below a certain number of grammes of CO2 per kilometre, but that does not include the embodied energy of getting the oil to you in the first place and things like that. I love the idea of a simple unified metric, like APR in financial circles, that could be used. However, any attempt to come up with such a metric should be derived pretty much exclusively by Government and experts and imposed on fossil fuels and extractive industries. There should be caution about too much consultation.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I agree.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Loud and clear, Professor Walker.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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Professor Walker mentioned the concept of climate literacy. From his brief experience of Ireland, what does he think the climate literacy is in Irish society?

Professor Ian Walker:

I am not sure. I have not been to Ireland for four or five years, in part because it involves flying, which I try to do as little as possible. If it is anything like the UK, there is an issue with low levels of climate literacy. As I said earlier, none of us has ever known a different world. I almost said in response to the previous question that the challenge with policing regulation is not only the vested interests we have talked about, but also the tendency of the population as a whole to self-police the status quo. If you speak, as we have spoken, to the average person in this country - and I strongly suspect it is a similar story in Ireland - many are slightly horrified at the prospect of, for example, restricting people's ability to drive SUVs. I am constantly reminded that we have a long way to go because in my experience of surveying or interviewing members of the public, many are not yet seized of the seriousness of this issue. I would imagine it is not dissimilar in Ireland.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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I agree. I have had this conversation before. Sometimes people are intimidated by the debate around climate action because it can be very technical and complex. A key thing politicians have to do is try to make the road to climate action so simplistic and financially incentivised that it will encourage people to embark on it. The vast majority of people want to play their part in climate action but it is up to us as leaders, whether in politics, civil society or the areas the witnesses work in, to make that journey as simplistic as possible.

Certain sectors of society will talk down to people about climate action with a mother-knows-best attitude, telling people they have to do this for the good of the world, rather than telling people there are huge opportunities in green technology or to put solar panels on your roof, power your home, sell excess energy back to the grid and have a couple of hundred quid at the end of the year. That type of language would be useful to bring people along.

When I talk about language, it goes back to the point Dr. Lunn made about how the rural-urban divide can be used for political or personal purposes. In the climate debate in Ireland, certain sectors of the political discourse are happy to try to demonise the concept of climate action for political gain because it may play well with certain sectors of society. That is politics but it shows why the role of independent media is so important because journalists in this country regularly fact-check politicians on issues like housing, business and jobs. They are issues journalists have more of a grasp of, rather than the complexities of the climate change debate. It would be useful if we had more journalists who could fact-check wrong statements made by politicians, political parties or whoever when it comes to climate action. That could be a range of things, including wind and solar. The media has a role to play in independent fact-checking but the problem, as outlined earlier, is having journalists with the level of knowledge to do it.

Dr. Lunn looks at the great enthusiasm among the younger generations for climate action. How would he harness that enthusiasm and change it into opportunities for younger people to play an active role?

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I will start by coming back to the literacy question, because we measured it. Earlier this year, my colleague at the ESRI, Shane Timmons, and I published a report using a representative sample of adults in Ireland which quizzed people about what they did and did not know. It is not a perfect international benchmark but Professor Walker is right that we are not atypical. We are pretty typical. We are lucky in having few climate change deniers. Over 90% of the population believes in human-caused climate change.

Only 75% understand that climate change is caused by the release of gases, though. A substantial proportion think it is caused by humans and that we are directly heating the atmosphere through our activity rather than it actually being a greenhouse effect caused by gas. There are, therefore, some basic misconceptions among approximately one quarter of the population about the straightforward mechanism of climate change, if you like.

Then, if we get into more detailed questions, we get into difficulty. Approximately one third of the population does not realise that agriculture is a major emitter in Ireland. That is quite a big gap in our knowledge of what makes us a bit different from the perspective of other countries as a climate change polluter. As for where we run into real trouble, there is a pretty good idea of what the impacts of climate change are going to be and what trouble it will and could cause. People are quite good on that stuff and have absorbed that from the news. What they are not good at is what to do.

We gave people a list of 12 actions that ranged from really high impact, such as eating a plant-based diet and not taking one long-haul flight per year, which will have a big impact on a person's climate footprint, down to things that have almost no impact like not littering. We got people to put those action into categories of high, medium and low impact. They were better than chance, but not much. People could do it. They could tell that a flight, in particular, was problematic but they underestimated the impact of making dietary changes. They overestimated the impact of the things they have been taught since they were small. They overestimated the impact of things like not littering and recycling, which are good for the environment and are behaviours we want people to adopt but they do not have a large climate impact, whereas people were less likely to identify the big things that have a climate impact.

Therefore, the answer to the Senator's climate literacy question, which is also related to the question of how we make young people active, is that we are not bad. We are lucky in not having deniers. When it comes to what to do, however, from all the possible actions a person could take, which is an enormous list and we talked about that earlier, it is really hard for an individual to decide what he or she can do in any meaningful sense given the state of knowledge that people not only have but that they realistically could have.

That brings me to what the Senator asked about young people. We published the report today about young people's attitude to climate change. Overwhelmingly, and interestingly, they are no better than older adults. If anything, they are slightly worse at identifying actions that are effective. This idea that young people know what to do is not true; they do not. They are much more worried about it, however. The general adult population is pretty worried. More than 70% of the adult population is worried. More than 90% of our young people are worried. They are almost all-----

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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Dr. Lunn said 70% of the adult population.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

According to our measure, 70% of the adult population is worried about climate change. We get more than 90% of young people with a similar measure. What young people think is that they cannot decide either which actions are going to be effective or not. They kind of know that, because when we give them an opportunity to say who is really responsible for driving this between individuals, companies, the Government or whatever, they overwhelmingly say the Government. They said in the report we published this morning that they want to see more radical action. They want to see higher taxes, bans and car-free zones in cities and towns. They want to see more radical Government action. I am not here to tell the committee whether that is right or wrong but I am here to tell members that is what our young people want. They know they cannot as individuals tackle this problem in a meaningful sense. When we test that, we can see that because they really do not know how to go about it. It needs leadership. It needs rules and changes. What they want to see is more radical policy, which is what the report shows today. That is 16 to 24-year-olds anyway.

Professor Ian Walker:

I will jump in very quickly. Dr. Lunn just reminded me of something that is relevant to this question and also to a couple of earlier questions, especially the one about education. In terms of this question of expertise, literacy, understanding and so on, we did some work a few years ago that looked at professional building modellers. There is this classic problem in the construction industry that every building uses more energy in practice than it was modelled to use. Therefore, we tested a load of building modellers. We had some objective data and we measured what they thought the reality was. We found that most of them were responding pretty much randomly. In fact, one quarter of the professional building modellers we looked at had an understanding of where energy was going in buildings that was worse than if they had just guessed the answers to the questions. They were systematically misinformed in one quarter of the cases. Even people who deal with sustainability issues for a living sometimes do not have the literacy necessary to make relevant decisions. I am glad I remembered that because it is a useful reminder of some of the limits we might be facing if we are going to try to address this through getting 5 million individual people up to sufficient levels of literacy. It is further grist to the mill for the idea that we should be trying to fix this through structural and regulatory approaches.

I really would like to give some credence to Senator McGahon's point about the notion of reframing this, however. There is research to suggest that this loss framing, that is, the idea that we must give things up to deal with ecological damage, is harmful and turns people off. It does not seem to be a very effective form of messaging. I would really like and would support the idea of looking for opportunities to frame this more positively. We heard the notion of the Celtic tiger mentioned earlier. A country like Ireland seems to me to have a real opportunity to take the lead in being the model for green technology and building those industries that are going to have to happen. There is no question that we are going to have to shift our industrial base to produce different things and live in a different way. There is an opportunity to be the person who redefines the notion of progress and takes hold of those opportunities.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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That is excellent. I think we are managing that concept of reframing the debate. That has been happening in Irish society in the last two or three years. We can do more to reframe the debate to show the opportunities that exists in terms of new jobs, new opportunities and how money can be made in all these new sectors,. That will really stem the tide of public debate. I thank the witnesses for those answers.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Senator McGahon. Did Senator Boylan wish to come in briefly?

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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Yes, if we have a bit of time. I want to ask Dr. Lunn whether the ESRI has done any analysis on looking at what Mr. Eric Lonergan and Ms Corinne Sawers refer to as extreme positive incentives for change, EPICs, rather than looking at penalising people and using the taxation model, whereby we make things cheaper or provide those extreme incentives that have been shown to be more productive. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, research on turf cutting clearly stated that a ban without alternatives was going to be a disaster, and we are seeing that play out. Is the ESRI looking at evidence around the model the Supercharge Me: Net Zero Fasterbook put out to show those extreme positive incentives are more productive than penalising people. I would be interested to hear Dr. Lunn's view on that.

The other question is around the importance of climate literacy and educating journalists. I would like to hear whether there is a way we can protect the media. We are seeing a lot of panels of experts being presented where people come up on the radar and are nearly the go-to people then on certain subjects. However, they are representing independent think-tanks and the transparency around those think-tanks is not always clear. The Chair should not worry; I am not going to name the organisation. One body has been on the public airwaves quite a lot recently around the energy security issue, however. Its website mentions that it has corporate donors but it does not say who those corporate donors are. Is the ESRI doing any work with journalists around picking these experts and either asking questions publicly about who funds their organisations or ensuring they are actually independent and coming forward with independent information? Is the ESRI doing work with journalists around those bodies to give balance, which is what they are often brought on for?

Dr. Pete Lunn:

Embarrassingly enough, the honest answer to the question is that I do not know. I am not aware of anyone in the ESRI doing work on EPICs. It is possible that one of my colleagues is and I am unaware of it. That does happen; we are a large enough organisation. Somebody might be but if they are, I do not know about it.

One thing is important here, though, and this goes back to the report we published earlier in the year that I mentioned in response to Senator McGahon. We looked at carbon taxation. Senator Boylan is right to worry that punitive measures might not be as good as strong, positive incentives. I understand that logic. We were surprised how much support there was for carbon taxation, however. In that representative sample of adults, a higher proportion of that sample wanted to see the carbon tax go up than go down, which for a tax is pretty unusual. It gives a real sense of what people think the urgency of the problem is and what they want. We were genuinely surprised. We told people and explained the tax to them. We explained to some of them where it went. It did not matter that it was a hypothecated tax; it made no difference to what they wanted.

We gave them a slider, we told them what the tax was now and we even translated that into how much it added to a bundle of briquettes or the cost of heating your home. We translated all four and asked those we sampled what they thought should happen and more people wanted to push the slider up than wanted to push it down.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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That is reporting on the behaviour but we are interested in the behaviour and the impact. Will Professor Lunn find out for us whether the ESRI is looking at the extreme positive incentives for change, EPICs, model because I am curious to know? The analysis of Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers in that book focused on what is actually having an impact on our carbon emissions and behaviour. While people might say they are in favour of carbon tax increases, is the tax shifting their behaviour? There are two things we have to do. We have to get public buy-in but we also have to get people to undertake the behavioural change necessary for climate action. That is what is so interesting about EPICs. There seems to be proof that it is the incentive that causes the shift in behaviour.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I will happily get back to the Senator on whether anyone in the institute is doing any work on that model but I am afraid I do not know.

Dr. David Robbins:

There is no work being done with regard to holding the representatives of these think-tanks or various spokespeople to account and being transparent. Some of the research we have done in interviewing environmental correspondents around the world shows they have this idea called "radical transparency". They want to be very transparent about their own news-gathering processes but also expose or be transparent about the agendas of the sources, the people they might interview. It is very important that news consumers know where these people's money is coming from and what their agendas are. Nobody is doing that kind of work in Irish journalism. Nobody is training journalists to be able to do that. I believe this is down to resources. I know from our journalism students who do internships in media organisations that the whole briefing given to radio journalists in particular is that the level of detail people can go into is a matter of resources. It comes down to newsroom constraints on thoroughly checking out and interrogating these people when they come on the air.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am interested in hearing the witnesses' insight into a couple of things. A lot has been done in France. There was a massive reaction with the mouvement des gilets jaunes. Are there lessons to be learned from that, which was quite a jolt to the system?

The National Economic and Social Council, NESC, did some work on how to frame this discussion and it came up with the concept of appealing to people to have resilience, that is, that your farm, enterprise or family would be resilient for the long-term future. There is great traction in that because it emphasises more of a co-operative approach than one of finger-pointing. Arising from that, do the witnesses have any information on how successful the Dutch were when they sought to form sectoral compacts? They recognised it was not going to be a matter of individual action but saw the possibilities for community in sectors. For example, the food sector is brought together and, instead of just pointing the finger at farmers and calling them the villains, it is asked what features are needed of a food and agriculture sector if it is to remain competitive in the long term. We get into a somewhat different conversation from a conversation on climate inventory that looks at biomethane and all of this. Is there evidence to suggest this approach of everyone getting resilient within their own sectors can get traction? It would also facilitate some of the regulation that would otherwise be seen as an awful attack on us if consumers, producers and everyone else were all in the room together. People can then see that, for example, we have to get rid of non-recyclable plastics and, the sooner we get it done, the better. I would like to hear the witnesses' take on that.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

I will take those points in reverse order. I do not know of any evaluation of sectoral compacts. I am unaware of any published evaluation that would tell us whether they are successful. I do not know. They accord with the idea that this is a problem for collective action and that trying to solve it collectively will be beneficial, which I believe is true. We have to be so careful. As an ESRI researcher who does behavioural research, I work across multiple policy areas in which consumer interests are at odds with commercial interests and in which there is pressure to regulate while the industry desperately asks to be allowed get everyone together to sort the problem out between them. In my experience, nine times out of ten that is an excuse to delay. People will find ways to delay. We can delay food labelling, which is desperately needed, despite there being a ton of research suggesting it would make a real difference to people's diet and health. It is getting delayed further and further by that kind of approach. Perhaps we can afford that. We may be able to afford five or ten years more of people not having decent nutritional labelling, although some people would dispute that. However, we definitely cannot afford such delay on climate. Given that experience, I know we sometimes need to be very wary of thinking we can find voluntary approaches and not have to get the big stick out. That is my honest response.

As concerns the yellow vests, where you move to change things radically and quickly before people have joined the dots up, have understood what you are trying to do and that a collective effort is under way to solve a major social problem, it is not a surprise if you run into massive opposition. It is a warning to us about how to go about this. I cannot say I know what the solution is but it can be seen where things did not go well in that case. We can see some of that at the moment in the opposition to some active travel schemes. People are failing to notice these measures are a very important part of climate policy. They may not see that a particular local change joins up those dots and that other localities are doing the same. A lot of that is what is at the heart of what we are discussing here, the idea of getting a more collective communication.

Professor Ian Walker:

To add to that, there is a real lesson from the mouvement des gilets jaunesin terms of readiness. I have been to several workshops and conferences with titles along the lines of "Is Driving the New Tobacco?" We can learn from this. Ireland has had a smoking ban since 2004 and we got one about the same time. Most European countries have got some sort of smoking ban in public places. I am pretty sure that all of these were passed without much complaint, which stands in strong contrast to the French yellow jacket protests in response to possible restrictions on driving. I would argue that this shows pretty strongly that, when those smoking bans were introduced, people had been readied and prepared for the change in a way that every government has completely failed to do in respect of climate behaviours such as flying, driving and agriculture. There could not be a better indication of how important it is that Government action and messaging changes now. It is already 20 years too late but that change is urgent if we are to begin this process of preparing people. There needs to be a consistency of messaging that certain things are a problem and need to be reduced and stopped. The incentives and disincentives we have talked about need to be put in place. It needs to happen quickly and there needs to be consistent messaging from right across the Government.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will make a few observations myself as no other members are indicating. I spent the past few weeks reading submissions on proposed active travel projects in my home city. There are hundreds of them. I draw the attention of the witnesses to them because Limerick's local authority is actually out in front in proposing some really good schemes. However, once the public starts getting engaged, the process becomes very challenging. These submissions form a really interesting data set. Perhaps they do not represent the fullness of public opinion on these active travel schemes, which will impact on and benefit communities, but they certainly show engagement from both ends of the spectrum, that is, those who are very much in favour of these measures and those who are very much against them.

There is much to draw from what they are saying. Interestingly, of the hundreds of well thought-out and argued submissions I read, none mentioned climate and that this is the reason we are doing this. There was no understanding on either side of the argument, whatever people might have felt the right thing to do was with respect to climate action, that this is why we are doing it. I found that fascinating. We have a hell of a lot to think about with regard to everything we have heard today if we are to get through to the public about the kind of systemic change that is needed. I agree with Dr. Lunn that the challenge is in changing our systems, which will not be easy. There is a brick wall somewhere where the message is simply not getting through.

The media have an important role to play. Editorial policy and advertising have been touched on in this discussion. The example of tobacco-related advertising was given and how these companies were vilified. Dr. Lunn might correct me if I am wrong, but I think the evidence shows that was effective and that fewer people smoke in countries that have these regulations related to tobacco advertising. It seems to me cars are in the same realm, not just with regard to the climate but also damage to people's health from localised emissions and the sedentary lifestyles associated with a car-oriented society. There is an economic impact too. There is an idea that enabling the flow of cars is good for the economy but the evidence shows it is not and that, if liveable towns and city centres are provided, there is more footfall because cars are limited by physics and their sheer size. It is not possible to get as many people into a town or city centre if a transport system is based around cars.

Going back to tobacco, it seems that health is a powerful lever. If people are not necessarily interested in climate or it is abstract for them, they are absolutely interested in their health. There is evidence, when you lean into health arguments, that it matters to people, who will then change their behaviours. We saw evidence of this last year when there was a significant national debate regarding smoky fuels. When doctors started to say that, regardless of climate, this was affecting people's personal health and the health of those around them, it swayed the debate such that we have those regulations now.

I am interested in reading the report the ESRI published this morning. Has Dr. Lunn done similar studies in the past? Can we see trends emerging now? There was a headline I picked up on this morning that young people aged between 16 and 24 agree we should have pedestrianised town and city centres and we should not have internal domestic aviation. Can we see trends or is this the first study of this kind? I do not have too many questions but there is certainly much to think about. We will have two more sessions on this subject in the next two weeks, leading up to Christmas. We will ultimately write a report based on everything we hear. It is to be hoped we will get consensus across the committee and important findings and recommendations that we can then bring to Government to try to influence policy. If the witnesses want to respond to any of those points, I would be interested in hearing their thoughts.

Dr. Pete Lunn:

We have systematically looked at submissions about active travel. My team has a research programme with the National Transport Authority. It has only just started. One of the first things we did was to get a feed of many submissions from many different projects and look at them. The Chair is right about people not joining up the dots to climate and realising it is part of climate policy. We are not doing that research programme because we think every active travel scheme is good and should not be opposed. It is perfectly legitimate for people to oppose changes to their local communities that they view as negative if they wish. What we can see, and the reason we are involved, is that there are systematic misperceptions about these schemes. It is clear that if we communicate in different ways, we might be able to do something about that and get people to have a better understanding.

One misperception we know exists is that because people can see the negative impacts, with something disappearing, such as parking space, they focus on that, but they find it hard to imagine what will happen to their community and what the positive impacts will be. When these active travel changes are systematically studied, it is found that many people who initially opposed them end up liking them. That is a real problem if we are trying to get change. How do we get people to the position of liking the change to begin with, if they know it will be beneficial, rather than after the fact as they look back at it? There are classic examples of this, with none better than the London congestion charge, which was opposed by 85% of Londoners until it was put in place. They then voted to increase it because it had such a beneficial effect on London city centre.

Getting people to imagine what positive things can happen to their localities and communities is part of the story. We are starting to research this to see how we can do it and trying to devise interventions. There is time pressure here. We have only started to dip our toe in the water. It is an important research issue. We are picking and choosing a few projects. It would be great if more people were doing this kind of work.

I will leave the advertising question to others. The Chair's second question was about trends. This is the first time we have ever managed to get a representative sample of 16 to 24-year-olds. It is very hard to do. We have not done it before. I do not know whether there are trends. I do know from the report we published this morning that the 16 to 24-year-old group is more radical in what it wants to see than older adults are. One has to be careful with that, because people in that group are mostly not the people who are paying. As they get older, they may become more conservative and lose that radicalism. I would be very surprised if the current older cohort, of which I am clearly one, was as radical as this group is when they were that age. I know I was not. I do not think my friends were. We do not have data on that but I think it is pretty clear that 16 and 24-year-olds now-----

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Anecdotally, we believe younger people are more radical generally. That is a historical trend. Could it be the case that-----

Dr. Pete Lunn:

Yes, it is. That is a fair point to make. Usually, that refers to what might be called a political left-right divide on issues of fairness and redistribution. It does not refer to environmental policy and climate. The important thing to understand here is that we are measuring a young cohort of people who want to see much more radical climate action than the older group does and would have thought when they are aged 16 to 24. I am comfortable saying that even though I did not measure it when the older group was that age. I think that is pretty clear.

Professor Ian Walker:

We did a massive swathe of work with the staff and student population in my old university and found the reverse there. We found that staff were much more concerned than the students. That was about eight years ago. It is to be hoped that has shifted. Predictably, I will agree with Dr. Lunn again. I want to add some hope too. Some interesting and convincing work has come out of the human geography world about what it calls the reverse causality hypothesis of attitudes. We tend to think we have an attitude towards something, think it is a good idea, and therefore we do it. The geographers have been arguing that it can work the other way around. They say that if people's environment changes in such a way that it obliges them to behave in a certain way, the changes are that their attitude will come round and become positive to that behaviour. Psychologists will understand that from knowing about cognitive dissonance and so on.

This suggests that there is truth to the notion of "Build it and they will come". If we create liveable streets, neighbourhoods, pedestrianised shopping areas and so on, there will be an initial backlash. We have seen that repeatedly. We know people have concerns.

This work shows us that, in practice and in theory, once we can get over the initial pain, much of the time - although not all of the time - attitudes will shift and become more positive as was the case with the example of the congestion charge. This has a potential practical implication from a policy perspective because it strongly suggests that there is a natural timing to making these large disruptive changes within electoral cycles. It is probably not a good idea to do these things six months before an election, but perhaps six months after an election becomes a slightly more preferable point from the perspective of elected members.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Professor Walker for that advice. He mentioned trialling solutions. I understand that the UK has experimental traffic orders. How effective is it to trial something for three months or six months in trying to go from the 85% against to the 85% in favour? Is legislation on trailing the way to do it?

Professor Ian Walker:

I am not an expert on the legislative side, although I definitely know that the experimental traffic regulation orders allow local authorities to test things for three, six, nine or perhaps 18 months. I am aware of many cases where something was tested under that process and has remained after being shown to be a success, hopefully through the kinds of mechanisms I just mentioned. However, I am not aware of a systematic review of that. I would not feel confident to say trialling always works because I am aware that the examples I am thinking of might just be the ones I happen to know.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I am aware of projects anecdotally. During the Covid pandemic we saw many active travel projects. There was a large outcry about one in Limerick, but it was put in because it was the right thing to do and now nobody talks about it; it is just there and hopefully it will be there forever. There seems to be significant opportunity if we can develop trialling systems and legislation.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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I have no questions. We have had a good long session. I tuned in during my commute to Leinster House. The discussion was incredibly interesting. There is much food for thought. What I have taken from it is that politicians, public representatives and media have a significant role to play particularly in trying to remove much of the tension and fraught debate from many of these issues. While it is easier said than done, we need to try to avoid political exploitation and headlines in the media. As someone said earlier, there is definitely a tendency to pit a sustainable agenda against rural agenda.

The Chairman has repeatedly stated that people in rural and urban areas want these emissions targets to be reached. They want to have a cleaner planet. They want to reduce emissions and reduce global warming. Quite often, politicians and the media slip into this narrative of rural against urban and the Greens against others. People get what I am saying. That is certainly what I take from this incredibly interesting discussion. I have no further questions because I think the members have given the witnesses a good grilling.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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It is time for lunch.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I have a question for Dr. Lunn. Does the ESRI have any research on people's willingness to target high net worth individuals on their high consumption? I understand that the top 10% of the population emit nearly as much as the bottom 50%, which comes down to the aspect of fairness. We have seen the conversation about the number of people who flew to COP. Ordinary people are pointing to the fact that they are being told they cannot take a short-hop flight to Paris or wherever, whereas all these people are flying in their private jets to a meeting to solve climate change. Are we looking at that? France and Switzerland are considering taxes on private jets. Are we asking questions about going after those very high emitters and very high-consumption lifestyles?

Dr. Pete Lunn:

The answer to that question is "Yes". My team is working on a few specific projects, but one in particular relates to perceived fairness and the redistributive element of that perceived fairness. Examples of that would be progressive carbon taxation. I am not suggesting what I am about to say is a good idea; I am just giving it as an example and the committee might think it is a good idea or not. Progressive carbon taxation is something like allowing people to have one flight a year that is tax free, but those taking a second flight in the year will get hit with a tax. For a third flight, that tax becomes higher. That is a way of having a progressive carbon tax that more strongly hits the people who are polluting the most and tries to change the distributive element of carbon taxation which understandably people are nervous about because elements of carbon taxation will hit the least well off harder. We potentially want a more progressive taxation.

We are establishing a research programme to study these issues and see what people would regard as distributionally fair, given not only the distribution of income but also, as the Senator rightly said, the distribution of emissions and the interaction between the two. Can we come up with systems that people instinctively think are fairer than other systems? If we can, that would be a useful thing to inform policy. The bottom line is that we are doing it, but we have only just started.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will leave the final word to Dr. Lunn. I thank Dr. Lunn, Dr. Robbins and Professor Walker for joining us. We have had an incredibly thought-provoking session. We will have two further sessions and will look more at media and advertising. Ultimately, we will write a report with recommendations and we will try to steer Government in the right way with respect to actions that are necessary. We would be very happy to receive any other information any of the witnesses might like to add for consideration when we are preparing our report.