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.