Watch: Public seminar on politician and public support for decarbonisation

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[Lucas Geese] The elephant in the room question across the social sciences is therefore, of course, why don’t modern societies deeply and rapidly decarbonise?

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[Asher Minns] And we’ve got a totally topical, totally topical conversation today.

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I’m Asher Minns.

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I’m the executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and always really very interested in public opinion, political opinion.

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I like to think that I run evidence-based climate change communication.

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I have done for many years.

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And so I am a great customer of some of the

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information that we’re going to hear about today.

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And the timing is completely topical because as everybody knows, we have incoming Burnham.

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And so the topics of political support, public support, are they the same?

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Are they different?

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What’s going to happen is perfectly timed, even though I scheduled this at the beginning of the year, so I can’t claim credit for that at all.

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I’m delighted to introduce our speakers today.

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We have Lucas Geese from here at the Tyndall

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at the University of East Anglia.

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The Tyndall Centre is a partnership of five UK universities led by us here at the Tyndall Centre HQ at the University of East Anglia.

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We then have Susie Wang from Climate Barometer.

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And the challenge with Climate Barometer, I think, is keeping up with all the fantastic data that they keep coming out with all the time as they dip into different perceptions and political perceptions.

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And then Sam Chetan-Welsh

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has very kindly agreed to be our discussant.

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Sam’s from the Green Alliance and to put it all a bit in the context of the policy world,

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People can introduce themselves a little bit as well, the speakers.

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I’m trying not to be here too much.

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So I’m going to, so we’re going to do up to 10 minutes each of Lucas, Susie and Sam.

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And then we will go to questions, very, very open discussion.

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I think we’ll do that by putting your hands up if you don’t mind, because I can’t keep an eye on absolutely everything.

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And my colleagues

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Sophie and April will be helping with that to flag that to me as well.

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And I will end at 10 to 1 just because it just gives us all time to go and do what it is we need to do next rather than just doing back-to-back meetings.

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I just think it’s a more hygienic way of running these things.

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So welcome to you all.

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Well, thank you for your work, your interest in our work at the Tyndall Centre and how it fits into the wider world around academia and policy.

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I’m going to

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Start with Lucas, please.

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Lucas, over to you.

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[Lucas Geese]
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Yeah, well, hello and thanks very much for the introduction and for organizing this panel.

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It is, you know, really great to see so many joining us today, which I guess, you know, shows also the interest and perhaps also

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a bit of the general concern of colleagues in relation to the politics of decarbonisation.

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Yeah, and I hope I can provide some good food for thought to our communities here based on my work at Tyndall UEA

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with this presentation entitled Knowledge, Carbon Footprints and the Politics of Decarbonisation in the [UK].

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So,

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this is my starting point and I would like to raise attention to the well-known problem.

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You know, that UK decarbonisation efforts are still, you know, they still fall short of long-term climate mitigation goals.

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whether we use the Paris Agreement or Net Zero as a benchmark.

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For example, the Climate Change Committee stated in its most recent report to Parliament on the 2025 carbon budget that there is now a significant gap between the plan’s projected emission reductions and the UK’s 2030 National Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement.

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So, anyway…

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so the

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The elephant in the room question across the social sciences is therefore, of course, why don’t modern societies deeply and rapidly decarbonise?

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After all, we know, you know, it would be technologically feasible.

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It’s also by and large publicly wanted.

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And yet there is still this public policy gap.

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existing.

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So for political scientists specifically, I think this raises the question to what extent politics is part of the problem.

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And if so, why?

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Obviously, politicians, they are central to crafting and debating and passing climate legislation.

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So their role is undoubtedly crucial.

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So the question

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is, what keeps politicians from leading on net zero then?

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You know, we know they are subject to a lot of blame from voters, but also climate activists.

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For example, Greta Thunberg once said,

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Although politicians have great opportunities to improve things, it turns out that saving the world is not their main priority.

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However, I guess, you know, while it is easy and perhaps attractive to blame individuals with a lot of power like politicians, I think as social scientists, we know that these individuals are, of course, also subject to cognitive biases and incentives, institutional incentives, that affect their behavior like any human being.

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And I guess understanding these dynamics in relation to climate policy therefore holds great promise in understanding what holds society actually back in deeply and rapidly decarbonizing.

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Against this backdrop, I would like to present two research outputs that I co-developed.

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And I say co-developed because I would like to raise attention to the fact that these studies would not have been possible without my co-authors, John Kenny,

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and Chantal Sullivan-Thomset, who deserve much credit for these studies.

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John is actually 1st and corresponding author of the first study, and Chantal’s expertise in green politics and qualitative research methods were instrumental for the second study.

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So let’s dive into the first study in which John and I, we sought to map out UK politicians’ knowledge and their comprehension of central IPCC communication and findings.

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As we probably all know, the IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science in relation to climate change, right?

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It is comprised of leading climate scientists and undertakes a huge stocktaking of climate change science in six to eight-year intervals.

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And the most recent assessment report is the 6th one, which was published in 2013.

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And, you know, given its place under the UN umbrella, the IPC’s main purpose is actually to provide policy makers

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and I will repeat this, to provide policy makers with regular scientific assessments on climate change.

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And central to this are, of course, the so-called summaries for policy makers.

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However, to date, you know, we know very little about the extent to which politicians take note and internalise these central findings from IPCC reports.

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So therefore, Jonathan, I wanted to know how knowledgeable are MPs actually of key IPCC communications?

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So here we turn to a central climate science finding that was also put front and centre in the most recent sixth assessment report, namely the statement that global greenhouse gas emissions needed to peak by 2025 to retain a more than 50% chance of keeping global average temperature increase below 1.5 degrees.

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And in the UK, specifically, this finding was heavily disseminated in the media, not just in outlets like The Economist or The Guardian or the BBC, but also in more right-leaning outlets like the Daily Mail.

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Therefore, we thought, you know, that there should have been a realistic chance that MPs across party lines should be knowledgeable about the central finding.

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So we designed a new survey question to poll members of the House of Commons at the end of 20

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In the survey, where we first provided some basic information about the IPCC and its headline finding, and then provided answer options in five yearly intervals starting in 2025, which is the correct answer, until 2050.

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And maybe also important to say is that we also mirrored this question in the survey of the British public for benchmarking purposes.

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So, and here’s what we found.

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Only actually about 15% of respondents got the answer right.

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Also, as you can see here, by comparing the blue and yellow bars, the distribution of publics and MPs are quite similar.

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So this suggests, I think, that, you know, politicians are actually hardly more aware of these IPCC findings than any ordinary member of the public.

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Also, it is important to remark that respondents could, of course, have, they could have taken the time to look up the right answer online or pick it by chance.

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So these findings, I think, should be interpreted as an optimistic estimate at best.

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However, we also did find some relevant differences depending on party affiliation, with Labour MPs being significantly more likely to get the answer right than Conservative MPs.

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Let me now turn to the second study, similar to the previous one.

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This one had also a UK focus.

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But rather than focusing on MPs’ knowledge of climate science, it looked at the relationship between MPs and their geographically defined constituencies.

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So specifically in this study, we wanted to understand to what extent MPs are responsive to the carbon consumption habits of their constituents.

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Consumer behaviour is very important for net zero.

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The Climate Change Committee estimated in 2019 that no less than 68% of nationwide emission cuts will actually depend on this.

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And by exploring data from these place-based carbon calculator, we figured that people’s average carbon footprints in England varied quite substantially across electoral districts.

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Therefore, we wanted to know to what extent these local carbon footprints were actually associated with MP’s engagement in decarbonization politics, in particular in relation to carbon consumption.

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On the one hand, we thought that, you know, maybe MPs might appreciate the considerable potential of their constituencies to actually cut emissions.

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However, on the other hand, MPs representing such constituencies, they could also, of course, fear that required lifestyle changes were maybe not welcome, or at least there might be the perception of this, and therefore could decide to abstain from making decarbonisation the focus of their parliamentary work.

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So we pursued this research puzzle through a mixed methods research design based on parliamentary speech analysis, based on computational methods,

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And we also interviewed 20 sitting or retired MPs.

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And what we found is this, a negative relationship between local carbon footprints and MPs engagement with decarbonisation issues.

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In other words, those MPs who represent the highest emitting constituencies were among the most silent on decarbonisation issues.

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And again, we found that party differences were important here with a much stronger association for Conservatives

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than for Labour MPs.

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And as for the why, our qualitative interviews suggest, I guess, maybe what most people might assume that these differences are due to fundamentally different ideological ideas in terms of how strongly the state should intervene into people’s private lives.

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So-called Conservative MPs commonly stated things like that decarbonisation needs to be driven by markets and commercial decisions.

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Let the market decide where the opportunities are rather than have the government saying it’s X and we’re going for X and we’re going to make a law to make sure you go.

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Labour MPs, on the other hand, were, and that was, I mean, all this data relates to a time when the Conservatives were in government, and Labour MPs were quite critical of this approach on the part of the Conservative government, as indicated by this quote.

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Yeah, where this MP said, it’s always framed as educating people, telling people, rather than imposing any measures on them.

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And finally, we also managed to speak to a handful of MPs representing high-emitting seats, all of which were at the time Conservative, though.

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And it turned out that these individuals were particularly defensive of constituents’ carbon-dependent lifestyles.

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So as this MP said, people won’t do in a complex democracy anything that reduces the quality of their lifestyle.

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You can’t punish a population with decarbonisation.

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And another one stated that no one should go around lecturing all my constituents that they have got to find a pile of money to buy an electric car and a heat pump.

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So perhaps a quick wrap up, as I know I’m probably quite tight in time, let me highlight the following things for our discussion.

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First, I think that these studies that are presented and also other studies that are taking place, they show how important political barriers to deep and rapid decarbonisation actually are.

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And I think that this needs to be taken much more into account by our communities working at the science policy interface.

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And yeah, things, they won’t get easier.

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Party political polarisation is growing and it’s only poised to become starker as more lifestyle sensitive policies are needed.

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So I think finally the question to this audience is, how can we address these issues, especially given that net zero is to be achieved in less than 25 years?

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And with these words, I would like you to thank, I would like to thank you for listening and sorry for the interruptions in the beginning.

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That wasn’t part of plan.

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[Asher Minns] Thank you so much, Lucas.

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Can you remind me when your surveying was done, please?

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[Lucas Geese] The IPCC survey.

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So the field work time was at the end of 2023.

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So there was also at the time when the Conservatives were in government.

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[Asher Minns] Okay.

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[Lucas Geese] And this was published.

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The previous Parliament.

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That’s maybe important too.

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[Asher Minns] Yeah, lovely.

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Lovely.

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Okay.

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And this was published last year, correct?

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[Lucas Geese] We published this last year, yeah.

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[Asher Minns] OK, great.

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Thank you very much.

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Because, well, thank you, Lucas.

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We will be coming to questions and discussions later.

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Susie, would you like to share your slides, please?

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So Susie’s going to bring us a bit more up to date with more with some of the climate barometer work.

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I think people are probably aware of climate barometer, but if not, it’s a fantastic way of sort of

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taking the temperature of what’s going on around sort of political thought and perceptions on various time stages.

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However, we’ll let Susie introduce Climate Barometer and the work that she does.

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[Susie Wang] I’m Susie Wang.

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I’m from Climate Barometer.

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I’m the Insights and Data Systems Lead.

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So for those of you that might not have come across this before, we’re relatively new.

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We started in 2022.

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And what we started with was the idea that there’s a lot of data and research.

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and polling on climate change opinion in the UK, but it often seems like access and knowledge of the polling isn’t evenly distributed.

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It can be hard to find and also hard to reconcile different polls at different times that maybe don’t agree with each other.

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Not much of it tracks opinion over time either.

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So that’s something that is central to what we try to do.

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Oh yeah, there are some slides.

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So we ask a representative sample of UK MPs and the public a bunch of questions roughly every six months.

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The sample sizes are similar to Lucas’s, but we go through YouGov, so it’s about 100 UK MPs and 2,000 members of the general public.

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And we ask them questions about climate change, the environment, about net zero, and many other things.

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If you could click through to the next slide, please.

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The idea is, among other things, is to piece together the story of how progress on climate change is progressing or not with the public, with politicians, and to also make sense of not just our data, but what else is out there and what warning signs there might be for the climate sector to respond to.

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One of the things, key things that we started doing is tracking the gaps, so whether the politicians and the public align or whether there are perception gaps that can adversely affect political will on climate change.

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Onto what we’ve found.

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So, I mean, Sam will talk about this more, but

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over the past few years, we’ve seen the political consensus on climate change fall apart in a huge way with increased media hostility towards climate change, lots of anti-net-zero campaigning, and also a level of political fragmentation that the country hasn’t seen before.

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And basically, it would be fairly unsurprising if climate views were to just completely plummet.

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But the story from

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from our side is that it really hasn’t.

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If you could click to the next slide, please, Asher.

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So one of the key questions we use to understand public support for climate action is support for the government’s net zero target, which is shown on the screen now.

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And if you click, please, sorry, it’s going to be lots of annoying clicking.

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When you look over time, net zero support hasn’t really changed.

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So the top two lines are MP support and public support, and the bottom two are public opposition and MP opposition.

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And what you see is since the beginning of our tracking, which is October 2022, both of the top lines have dropped slightly, but they’re really kind of reaching a point of plateau.

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And opposition has again increased slightly, but also not particularly dramatic changes on either side.

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There’s been a little blip following the general election, but that seems to be more election related than anything else.

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I can talk about this more if people are curious.

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does seem to, if you could click, Asher, sorry.

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So yeah, basically plateauing, not plummeting.

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What has seemed to have plummeted are certain views from conservative MPs.

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If you click again, please, Asher.

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If we split this by political party,

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And for the public, it’s based on voting intention.

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And for the MP, it’s party affiliation.

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What you can see is around that peak for conservatives, around 81%, that was, again, that election blip.

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And from there, it’s really just gone completely downhill.

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which puts Conservative MPs out of sync with their remaining voters.

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The majority, around 60%, are still in favour of net zero.

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And actually, the only party that doesn’t have majority support for net zero are the supporters of Reform UK.

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But even here, it’s not super black and white.

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So our data with this 30% figure does seem to match other data from Hope Not Hate and More In Common, showing that around 1/3 of Reform supporters consistently tend to

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care about environmental issues and things like support net zero.

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Next slide, please.

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In terms of perception gaps, though, there is a persistent underestimation of that level of public support.

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So in addition to actual support, we also ask what proportion of the public do you think actually, what proportion of the public do you believe supports net zero?

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And so compared to that 63% figure from last year in October,

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You see that on average MPs and also Labour supporters, this is kind of similar for Lib Dem and Green supporters, are a little bit lower than it is actually.

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And the greatest amount of underestimation comes from conservative and reform supporters around net zero.

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Next slide, thanks.

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Another key tracking question that we ask is around perceptions of the cost of action on climate change compared to the cost of inaction on climate change.

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So we ask people to choose between these two statements, it will cost too much not to tackle climate change, or it will cost too much to tackle climate change.

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Over time, you can see the screen line of it’ll cost too much not to do anything about climate change has decreased quite a bit.

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So it has sort of slowly dropped, not so much for MPs due to the change in Parliament.

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And the line about it’ll cost too much to tackle climate change, hope I said that right, has increased slightly over time, which is unsurprising given the cost of living crisis that’s been ongoing.

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And this is also one particular area where MPs tend to be more optimistic than the public.

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Possibly also because this question, answers to this question tend to scale by income group.

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But for the public in general, it really seems that the perception of the cost of net zero are looming large alongside other kinds of costs.

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The next slide is about policy support.

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So it’s a bit more of a varied picture.

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Policies like incentives for homeowners and landlords to improve home insulation, so that green box,

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are fairly consistently high.

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It still remains above 70%, even though it’s maybe dropping a little bit.

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It’s kind of hard to see the slope here, but I’ll try and verbalise it.

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On the other hand, some really sort of pressure point policies like the phasing out of new gas boilers and the phasing out of new petrol and diesel vehicles do seem, well, they’re consistently unpopular.

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So support is around 30% and dropping over time.

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And towards the end of last year, actually dipped more into opposition than support for new diesel and new petrol and diesel vehicles, which is worrying.

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But despite how bleak that might look, MPs think the picture is even bleaker.

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So if you click to the next slide, please.

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MPs, when we ask them about whether the majority of their constituents would oppose or support these policies,

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basically for every single policies, MPs thought the majority of their constituents would oppose it compared to the actual percentage of voters that oppose.

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So the green line is what MPs thought and the orange lines, bars, are actual opposition to the policy.

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And you can see this applies for policies like low traffic neighbourhoods where actually opposition has been pretty low, especially since it’s been out of the news.

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Also for policies like new petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers where the gap is slightly smaller but still existent.

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Yes, next slide, please.

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These perception gaps are also particularly obvious when it comes to support for local and renewable infrastructure, which we also ask regularly.

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And this is specifically showing

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support for a new onshore wind farm in your local area or opposition.

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And you can see support kind of dropping over time.

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It has dropped about 11 percentage points and opposition has risen a little bit, but opposition still remains less than 1/3 of support.

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If you click, we can see what MPs think.

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Basically, consistently around 40% of MPs think most of their constituents will oppose.

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rather than support a local onshore wind farm in the area.

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Support is fairly low, it’s unchanging.

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And the public tend to agree.

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If you click again, we can see that one too.

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Thank you.

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And I think that brief blip is also an election anomaly.

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And then the story is virtually the same on the next slide when we ask about a new solar energy park, where if anything, the support is even higher

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than for wind farms.

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But we also see for the MP line here, it seems like the gap is even growing slightly, where more MPs now than compared to three years ago think that people would oppose a solar energy park in their local area.

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And opposition seems, yeah, in this case, opposition is perceived to be rising when much more than it actually is.

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And just on a final note, we asked

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Speaking of sort of local infrastructure, on the next slide, we asked what was most important to people when it comes to new infrastructure proposals in that area.

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And what we found particularly striking is that no matter what your politics is, what your gender, region, age, what social grade you sort of fall into, the top three were the top three circled here, impact on local environment, impact on energy bills, and impact on their local community.

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Whereas things like views on climate change and views on net zero really don’t seem to come into it.

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They only really come into it for the very sort of pro-environmental groups.

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And that really sort of reinforces this picture that decarbonization is being delivered through policies that people aren’t necessarily seeing as green or about net zero at all.

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And actually, it’s often about these local factors more than that.

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So that’s where I’m going to leave it.

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It’s a point of commonality after talking about all the gaps and differences.

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Thank you very much.

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And thanks, Asher.

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[Asher Minns] Thank you.

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Yes, absolutely fascinating.

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And what a wealth of data in there as well.

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Sam, you had some slides to share and yay, it’s working.

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That saves everybody a few minutes.

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Do you want to go on to presentation?

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Yeah, that’s it.

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Perfect.

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Over to you, Sam.

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[Sam Chetan-Welsh] Great, yeah.

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All looking good, actually.

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Yeah, just give me a thumbs up that all is good.

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Yeah, great.

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So, yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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It’s a real pleasure to be here.

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So I thought, you know, I’m not an academic.

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Green Alliance is a think tank based in Westminster that works on climate and the environment.

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I’m a senior political advisor, so politics is my sort of bread and butter.

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So I thought I’d

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take some of the insights shared by our esteemed academic colleagues and maybe have a zoom-out and have a think about further to what Lucas was saying about what are the real political incentives that are operating in the current moment on decarbonisation?

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What are politicians thinking?

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A question I’m sure we all often ask ourselves.

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So to

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Yeah, good.

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To zoom right out, let’s think about the political context that we find ourselves in.

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This is how we at Green Alliance tend to make any decision about what kind of policy and advocacy we do.

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And the big picture, as others have mentioned, is the kind of what we refer to as the kind of 2019 climate consensus has collapsed and fragmented.

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And whether that’s justified by political incentives, we’ll discuss further.

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And of course, the perception gap as

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mentioned, but in the background there’s also increasingly low trust in politicians and institutions, successive crises meaning the cost of living being the central political question that any decision maker has to answer.

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Meanwhile,

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more populist parties are on the rise and establishing established parties are really panicking looking at how to combat them because it’s leading to real electoral cost.

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I put Count Binface

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in there just for fun that really should be Zach Polanski.

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But you know, so and then maybe more micro just thinking in the much more recent term as in within the last few weeks,

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What these macro factors are meaning and the shift in leadership is that there is some political space opening on maybe more controversial decisions on decarbonisation, the zero emission vehicle mandate being one, but also drilling the North Sea and kind of briefing and counter briefing that we’re seeing in the press about what Andy Burnham’s exact approach to energy policy, for example, will be, never mind the kind of broader climate agenda.

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How committed is he actually to this agenda really does remain to be seen and the fate of Ed Miliband in terms of his cabinet post will be a key deciding factor of that.

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Of course, we’re seeing today that there’s again briefing and counter briefing, assuming that he’s not going to be the chancellor, but of course, let’s just see.

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Meanwhile, in the very recent period, a trend that we’ve observed at Green Alliance is both reform and the Greens who pose the biggest sort of existential threat to the main parties.

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on, especially to Labour, have both been stuttering, so reform having to deal with our own scandals and the Greens support kind of plateauing and them not owning the news agenda in the way they have been previously.

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So yeah, that’s the context in which everything I’m saying will come and how we at Green Alliance think it’s useful for us as climate and environment focused people to consider

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incentives.

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And maybe this is not my data, of course, but digging more into what’s really happening.

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One key theme that we’re observing is not denialism anymore.

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That seems to have evolved.

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And many people are talking about delayism.

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And how is that manifesting in the UK?

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Well, the incentives that are at work politically is that, and there are now

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more than one party competing for the right wing.

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If you look at this graph on the left, you can see that the Conservatives have shared a significant amount of support to reform, or at least that was the case in the 2026 locals, which were a big bloody nose for the main parties.

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But of course, we also have bubbling away in the background Restore, which is another growing political force, which is also even further to the right and taking some momentum out of Reform sails.

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But our assessment is that active denialism is not necessarily a strong vote winner.

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What we’re hearing through gossip is that the new reform line is not so much going to be denialism, but referring to net zero as well-intentioned but misguided.

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So because I think they understand there’s a bit of a brand cost to appearing, in the UK at least, to appearing to be anti-climate, but you know, just that net zero is the wrong kind of approach and we should have another way of doing things.

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Meanwhile, the Conservatives now, as we understand it, from having a lot of challenges with engaging with them, are just not talking about anything net zero ever.

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And if you bring that up even, then it’s very hard for your policy to be considered, including even in their own candidates, apparently.

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I’m sure people saw that story about Kemi Badenoch proposing to exclude candidates from standing as Conservatives if they actively support net zero.

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Meanwhile, another thing that’s bubbling away in the background that we’re really concerned about further to the research we discussed is that

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In speaking to a lot of rural MPs, one contributor we think anecdotally to the perception gap is that anti-solar, people opposed to solar development, particularly in rural areas, is a huge issue in their inboxes.

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So they are just receiving a lot of contact about it.

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So whether that’s proportionally representative of their constituency remains to be seen.

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But if you’re an MP and you get 50 emails about

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something or 100 or more, even though that’s a relatively small amount of people, it’s clearly, it’s concentrated and it’s freaking them out, shall we say.

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That’s certainly what we hear.

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Meanwhile, so why isn’t the consensus being defended?

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Why isn’t there a concerted push?

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Well, there’s a number of factors that we can look at for that.

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Andy Burnham’s political calculation that he’s got in front of him, you know, this graph from an agency helps to find that if he has to appeal to win an election, he has to appeal to reform voters and to green voters and to a lesser extent Liberal Democrat voters.

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So how do you square that circle?

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Does that, you know, how do you talk about decarbonisation and climate in that context?

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Meanwhile, the Greens support, a lot of which is not just about climate, it’s also about their relentless focus on cost of living, cost of living being a central issue, as I mentioned.

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Meanwhile, the Lib Dems, who are doing a pretty good job of taking chunks out of Labour’s vote and indeed some Conservative votes, they are seeing local nature as a means of getting back at the Greens.

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And also they, I don’t know if people saw, but Ed Davies stood up in the House recently and said that, any Tory who supports Net Zero is more than welcome in the Lib Dem.

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So I think they are trying to carve off some of that kind of wet instinct, as it’s called, in the Conservative Party and take some of their voters.

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Is that OK by you?

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[Asher Minns] I’m going to give just give you 2 more minutes just so that we can make sure we get plenty of time for discussion.

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Is that OK?

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[Sam Chetan-Welsh] Sorry, yeah, That’s OK.

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[Asher Minns] Thank you, Sam.

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[Sam Chetan-Welsh] Meanwhile, Labour, they’re reticent to defend their record, what it seems, and our assessment is that is that that’s a combination of having a lot of MPs in industrial areas who are concerned about energy prices, a fear of, you know, the right-wing press, and also, of course, this big threat from reform, who are able to make a lot of hay out of

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being anti-climate or kind of anti-net zero decarbonisation in a very broad abstract sense.

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So my last slide, just to wrap up, how are politicians responding to this moment?

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Well, this is a video of Katie White, the climate minister, talking about a solar installation at a football stadium in Bradford.

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National delivery is now clearly less important.

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That has policy implications for all of us working in climate.

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Local delivery is now seen in Westminster, rightly or wrongly, as the key thing.

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This is reflected in Andy Burnham’s Manchesterism vibe.

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What that is remains to be seen, but devolved power, you know, on insourcing, these are the tendencies he’s leaning towards.

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But at the same time, you know, looking to the esteemed colleagues at Climate Barometer and IPPR, is there not more room maybe to be talking about climate in the context of

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enormous heat waves and poorly adapted UK as the CCC has recently identified.

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You know, if another train has to get delayed or if another person has to sit through a working afternoon in a 35 degree house, should we avoid talking about climate?

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And I will wrap up there.

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Thank you very much.

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[Asher Minns] That’s wonderful.

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Thank you, Sam.

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Thank you, Susie.

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Thank you, Lucas, for massive amounts of…

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expertise and intelligence there of kind of what’s going on historically, what’s going on now, what’s going, you know, what’s perhaps happening into the future.

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So I’ve got loads of questions, but I’m not going to do that because of time.

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People, questions, if you would like to put your hand up, and I have two colleagues helping me here because I always miss hands.

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Anybody want to pitch in with the first question unless, otherwise I’m going to have to.

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[Question from Tony Colman] As an ex-MP, and when we are finished here, I’m going to the House Commons, so I’ll be finding out the latest on Ed Miliband, as people have said.

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And Sam is very good with his summary of where we are at the moment, absolutely spot on.

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But as I said to Lucas, when he did a very good analysis of what was happening in the Italian Parliament,

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The key is really what happens within the leadership block agreement on how to move forward.

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You’ve mentioned about Kemi Badenoch deciding to make this move, that’s the Tory party, into saying no candidate can stand if they want to press for net zero.

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equally well in the Labour Party, if somebody said, we are against it, then they couldn’t stand as a candidate.

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So I think one of the things you have to emphasise is that individual MPs, I’ll come back to the public assessment if you want later, are very much part of the whip.

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There is something called a whipping system of MPs.

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And if they vote against the whip, they can cease to be recognised as being of that political party and could be deselected.

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So I think it’s very important to recognise that the main influencing point is not to the individual MP, and it’s quite right, you could get 50 people turning up and saying they oppose solar farms, you’ll think everyone does.

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It is actually to recognise that the main decision making process is through

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the Parliamentary Labour Party organisation as a whole, and that it’s important to recognise that part of that is the Labour Party conference or a Conservative Party conference.

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So there is a wider issue on how policy is created and developed in politics, not just in the UK, but also in Italy, as we discussed before, Lucas, which takes away, you would say, the agency of the MP

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to think differently, but I think it’s important to us as academics to actually understand that the Green Alliance, working as they do to try and influence the people who are the SPADs, the special advisors who are working within.

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the consensus making machinery of how policy is made to be done.

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So I’d ask really, Susie, because you’re the one looking at the public and looking at the MP changes that are going on, is there any way of being able to have access into those decision making processes

371
00:37:47,862 –> 00:37:53,662
whereby we can see why the Conservative Party decided to abandon net zero.

372
00:37:54,142 –> 00:38:08,942
I’d love to get inside behind the curtain, if you like, which we as academics should be able to do to actually understand and interview the people as to why they took that decision in May and June this year.

373
00:38:10,222 –> 00:38:13,262
obviously because they thought they could outflank reform.

374
00:38:14,302 –> 00:38:32,542
So can I suggest there is a third level of analysis, and I said this to Lucas before, in terms of Italy, which is how in fact policies are made inside the political machine, because that, I think, would be a really, really important area to work within.

375
00:38:33,222 –> 00:38:33,422
[Asher Minns] Great.

376
00:38:33,422 –> 00:38:34,062
Thank you, Tony.

377
00:38:34,062 –> 00:38:36,462
Susie, do you want to respond on that one?

378
00:38:36,702 –> 00:38:40,542
[Susie Wang] The sort of this public perception or public politician perception gap?

379
00:38:42,142 –> 00:38:42,902
Yeah, absolutely.

380
00:38:42,902 –> 00:38:43,502
I mean, you’re right.

381
00:38:43,502 –> 00:38:45,182
That was quite a good question.

382
00:38:45,582 –> 00:38:48,782
I am afraid I don’t have a good direct answer to that.

383
00:38:48,782 –> 00:38:50,222
I would say it’s a very good point.

384
00:38:51,262 –> 00:38:56,422
I also would say in it’s a very difficult thing to ask.

385
00:38:56,422 –> 00:38:58,382
And what we do see is when we ask

386
00:38:59,022 –> 00:39:10,182
directly about specific policies where there’s a clear stance against it in the party line that I think the answer is just what the party line is and then that’s as far as you can read into it.

387
00:39:10,182 –> 00:39:25,022
What we have done in the past is tried to, for instance, not ask directly about net zero, but net zero without using the words net zero and have found some differences in being able to sort of get responses that are away from that and ideally

388
00:39:25,102 –> 00:39:27,502
the anonymity of the survey

389
00:39:28,622 –> 00:39:32,942
should protect MPs in some way.

390
00:39:33,742 –> 00:39:40,462
But I think we’re definitely not naive to the influences and the way that they might perceive that their answers are going to be received.

391
00:39:41,662 –> 00:39:49,822
Yeah, and I would say in terms of finding out the answer, probably something like interviews with their staffers, as you say, would be the way to go.

392
00:39:50,142 –> 00:39:51,742
But I personally haven’t done them.

393
00:39:52,102 –> 00:39:56,142
And I would say probably Sam and Lucas would have more experience than I do in that respect.

394
00:39:56,502 –> 00:39:57,902
[Asher Minns] In that case, I will hand to Sam.

395
00:39:57,902 –> 00:39:58,862
Thank you, Susie.

396
00:39:58,862 –> 00:40:02,942
Sam, why did the Tories drop net zero?

397
00:40:03,502 –> 00:40:05,502
[Sam Chetan-Welsh] Yeah, that’s a thoughtful question, Tony.

398
00:40:05,502 –> 00:40:07,222
I mean, I think you’re right.

399
00:40:07,222 –> 00:40:16,862
Of course, there are internal party processes in these systems, but I would not overstate, personally, I would not overstate them relative to the fact that Kemi Badenoch, as we know, is

400
00:40:17,182 –> 00:40:22,702
is one of the most kind of ideological, ideologically consistent politicians we’ve had in a long time.

401
00:40:22,702 –> 00:40:25,982
Like she has thought this way for a very long time.

402
00:40:26,302 –> 00:40:35,742
Many people who work with her on the inside say that she’s to the right of reform on a number of issues, but feels that there are not even the incentives to be more honest on that.

403
00:40:35,742 –> 00:40:36,542
But let’s just say,

404
00:40:37,102 –> 00:40:43,502
The electoral reality she faces is, as you say, is being chewed up by reform.

405
00:40:43,742 –> 00:40:50,422
I think the counter argument that we at Green Alliance are making, particularly to the remaining kind of softer conservative

406
00:40:50,502 –> 00:41:04,862
who are more supportive of climate action is, is Kemi Badenoch’s strategy of being anti net zero, really paying electoral dividends, is trying to outcompete reform on being, you know, kind of anti climate, is it working?

407
00:41:04,862 –> 00:41:07,822
And the answer from the local elections is categorically no, right?

408
00:41:08,702 –> 00:41:10,862
They did not pick up new support.

409
00:41:11,022 –> 00:41:17,742
Where they did pick up was in very specific areas in London, and that is not, you know, reform territory at all.

410
00:41:17,742 –> 00:41:19,142
That’s not who they’re competing with.

411
00:41:19,542 –> 00:41:20,422
And good luck, you know,

412
00:41:20,542 –> 00:41:23,182
holding on to any Lib Dem Tory marginals.

413
00:41:23,182 –> 00:41:33,382
Meanwhile, as you know, Ed Davey is rubbing his hands together, I think, about thinking about fighting the Conservatives as they, you know, brand themselves as a party of the right and try to out reform Reform on this.

414
00:41:33,382 –> 00:41:45,582
So, yeah, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t underestimate just kind of raw political incentives and Kemi Badenoch’s ideology as driving this push in the Conservative Party and it being, you know, from the top down.

415
00:41:45,662 –> 00:41:50,422
[Tony Colman] Sam, but do you get involved in your analysis and not just in the

416
00:41:50,582 –> 00:42:00,622
money inside the policy-making machinery, because I really would suggest that you do that, because it’s not difficult.

417
00:42:00,622 –> 00:42:01,822
It isn’t difficult.

418
00:42:01,902 –> 00:42:03,382
I’m happy to help, you know what I mean?

419
00:42:04,622 –> 00:42:12,662
[Asher Minns] I’m going to close that question there then on that basis, because, no, that’s a very kind offer to help Sam and

420
00:42:12,662 –> 00:42:13,382
the Green Alliance.

421
00:42:13,702 –> 00:42:25,622
And I’m going to skip to Catherine, who we couldn’t get the microphone, but she has very kindly typed her question instead, which I just need to read out.

422
00:42:25,622 –> 00:42:26,662
Everybody else can read it.

423
00:42:26,742 –> 00:42:29,542
It’s the last question in the list there.

424
00:42:30,502 –> 00:42:31,702
Catherine asks,

425
00:42:33,022 –> 00:42:34,902
I’m not going to try and do Catherine’s voice.

426
00:42:35,142 –> 00:42:40,982
I’m just wondering what you think the cause for the MP public perception gap is.

427
00:42:41,462 –> 00:42:44,502
Is it the media and potentially the right wing press?

428
00:42:44,742 –> 00:42:49,942
Or does it come from discourses among the MPs talking among themselves?

429
00:42:50,502 –> 00:42:54,822
Lucas, may I go to you just because you’ve been, just see what you think.

430
00:42:55,222 –> 00:42:55,942
[Lucas Geese] Yeah, totally.

431
00:42:56,822 –> 00:42:57,542
no, thanks.

432
00:42:57,782 –> 00:42:58,982
It’s a great question.

433
00:42:58,982 –> 00:43:13,342
And I think it points also maybe to maybe, be a bit self-critical and reflect on our all roles that, obviously these MPs and politicians are important actors on climate.

434
00:43:13,382 –> 00:43:21,462
But I mean, the evidence shows that, they are, as I said, they have the cognitive and perception biases.

435
00:43:22,022 –> 00:43:36,022
And I think it’s also on us as the kind of, science and policy communities to maybe think about what we can actually do to provide better evidence and better communication.

436
00:43:36,022 –> 00:43:47,702
I think this is also one of the main takeaway messages maybe from our IPCC piece that, yeah, the message isn’t cutting through as it should be.

437
00:43:48,302 –> 00:43:50,422
And I think there’s just a lot more

438
00:43:51,062 –> 00:43:52,422
a lot more work to do, really.

439
00:43:53,702 –> 00:43:59,222
I think this is my kind of very self-critical response to that.

440
00:43:59,222 –> 00:44:10,982
So I mean, I don’t have all the answers either, but I think it’s, yeah, I think everyone just needs to maybe ramp up their ambition.

441
00:44:12,342 –> 00:44:14,982
[Asher Minns] I’m going to be, thank you very much, Lukas.

442
00:44:14,982 –> 00:44:19,222
I’m going to be indulgent here because we did lose a little bit of time.

443
00:44:19,862 –> 00:44:21,542
So I’m going to do another 5 minutes.

444
00:44:21,542 –> 00:44:24,182
If anybody wants to drop off, just drop off.

445
00:44:24,182 –> 00:44:29,542
But I think there’s some good questions here that are too good just to close it down or we reply by e-mail or anything.

446
00:44:30,902 –> 00:44:37,062
And Neil Mackillop, Mackillop, can I come to you to ask your question, please?

447
00:44:37,062 –> 00:44:43,622
Because I think you asking your question is going to be better than me trying to read it out and sort of codify it.

448
00:44:43,622 –> 00:44:44,422
Is that okay?

449
00:44:45,782 –> 00:44:47,862
If you could put your hand up, Neil.

450
00:44:48,822 –> 00:44:49,622
Yes, perfect.

451
00:44:49,622 –> 00:44:50,862
Thank you so much.

452
00:44:50,982 –> 00:44:53,062
[Question from Neil Mackillop] The survey questions are really interesting.

453
00:44:53,462 –> 00:45:00,742
And I guess over time, this question doesn’t really apply unless it’s a double thing of double biases.

454
00:45:01,542 –> 00:45:05,702
But I guess my question was, do these answers predict how people are going to act?

455
00:45:06,102 –> 00:45:11,062
So in other words, when MPs predict how they’re going to vote, does that actually predict how they will vote?

456
00:45:11,542 –> 00:45:22,182
And similarly, there’s for the public, probably even more challenging, they say they give an answer to a survey question, but how well does that predict how they’ll actually act when it comes down to it?

457
00:45:22,182 –> 00:45:27,782
And for example, there’s an on-site solar going to be built next to them.

458
00:45:28,662 –> 00:45:28,942
Having

459
00:45:28,942 –> 00:45:29,222
previously

460
00:45:29,222 –> 00:45:31,022
said, yeah, that’s great, we don’t mind, that’s good.

461
00:45:31,902 –> 00:45:42,062
does do they do they are they consistent with how they actually behave in terms of aligning with their perception of what of this dance they’ve given as their perception at the time of doing the survey?

462
00:45:42,862 –> 00:45:46,302
[Asher Minns] I’m seeing Susie nod, so I’m going to give this question to Susie, if I may.

463
00:45:47,582 –> 00:45:47,862
[Susie Wang] Oh, no.

464
00:45:48,622 –> 00:45:48,782
Yeah.

465
00:45:49,862 –> 00:45:50,542
Good question.

466
00:45:51,022 –> 00:45:53,022
I would, I mean, the closest I can

467
00:45:53,742 –> 00:46:06,942
get to an answer to that is, I mean, we’ve had a similar sort of question before about local infrastructure support, whether it’s hypothetical or a real actual project being announced in your area.

468
00:46:07,422 –> 00:46:12,462
And one of the things that we’ve tried to do lately, and not the way I presented,

469
00:46:13,422 –> 00:46:32,062
today, but in our more recent work, is test whether there’s a difference between support for local wind farms, local solar farms, if it’s a hypothetical one where it just said your local area versus if we specifically name their closest city in town or what they say is the closest city in town.

470
00:46:32,582 –> 00:46:40,942
And well, we haven’t released this yet, but it’s looking like there really isn’t much difference, which I know is not the same as what people actually do.

471
00:46:41,622 –> 00:46:42,382
But in terms of

472
00:46:43,342 –> 00:46:46,862
survey work, it’s getting closer, I think.

473
00:46:48,262 –> 00:46:55,262
what the kind of work that we would need is more local on the ground work to be able to sort of fill in this gap of knowledge.

474
00:46:56,742 –> 00:46:56,862
[Asher Minns] Yeah.

475
00:46:57,062 –> 00:46:57,902
Thank you, Susie.

476
00:46:57,902 –> 00:47:03,302
There’s far too many questions for me to deal with in a kind of in a reasonable way here.

477
00:47:03,302 –> 00:47:11,502
I think there’s some good chat going on about trade unions and all sorts of things.

478
00:47:12,702 –> 00:47:15,182
I’m going to, there was a question, well, actually from Stuart.

479
00:47:15,182 –> 00:47:15,942
Hello, Stuart [Capstick].

480
00:47:15,942 –> 00:47:16,862
It’s nice to see you here.

481
00:47:16,862 –> 00:47:21,982
Stuart is a former member of the Tyndall Centre, very important in Cardiff.

482
00:47:22,782 –> 00:47:27,342
So Stuart asks the sort of about the untouchability of lifestyles.

483
00:47:27,822 –> 00:47:33,022
Given the proportion of emissions are linked to lifestyles, Stuart worked very much around this topic.

484
00:47:33,262 –> 00:47:39,102
How do we get past this idea that lifestyles are untouchable and that people should never be asked to do anything to help?

485
00:47:40,422 –> 00:47:41,742
We’re going to finish with an easy one.

486
00:47:42,222 –> 00:47:43,822
Who would like to take that one?

487
00:47:47,342 –> 00:47:48,622
Nobody wants to take that one.

488
00:47:48,662 –> 00:47:49,502
OK, Stuart.

489
00:47:49,662 –> 00:47:50,782
OK, Lucas, thank you.

490
00:47:51,182 –> 00:47:56,942
[Lucas Geese] Yeah, I also see that actually Chantal has already answered it in the chat.

491
00:47:56,942 –> 00:47:58,862
So thanks, Chantal.

492
00:47:58,862 –> 00:48:00,302
No, it’s a great question.

493
00:48:00,302 –> 00:48:01,342
To be honest, I think

494
00:48:02,062 –> 00:48:17,102
It’s the big question for the next years and decades to come because, as we move, as we want to move towards, I guess, net zero, I guess these kind of policies that affect personal lives are becoming more important.

495
00:48:17,742 –> 00:48:30,702
And it seems that politicians, especially those who have like a kind of ideological bias against state interventions, that this is kind of the issue that they are most afraid of.

496
00:48:33,742 –> 00:48:36,462
and I think that’s the problem.

497
00:48:36,462 –> 00:48:37,262
I think we need it.

498
00:48:37,422 –> 00:48:42,062
The question is, how can we politically implement it?

499
00:48:42,222 –> 00:48:43,822
[Asher Minns] Sam wanted to say something here.

500
00:48:43,822 –> 00:48:45,622
Yeah, I knew everybody had something to say on this.

501
00:48:45,622 –> 00:48:47,182
So Sam next and then Susie.

502
00:48:48,182 –> 00:48:50,582
[Sam Chetan-Welsh] Well, a very brief, slightly anecdotal reflection.

503
00:48:50,582 –> 00:48:56,942
What my understanding is, that, you know, people will do things if they believe responsibility is shared fairly, right?

504
00:48:56,942 –> 00:48:59,742
So, you know, if you as a

505
00:49:00,182 –> 00:49:08,982
as a decision maker can sell an idea on the basis that the people with the broadest shoulders are the ones who are taking on the most burden, then it could work.

506
00:49:09,302 –> 00:49:11,502
Otherwise, yes, it is a big, big challenge.

507
00:49:12,622 –> 00:49:15,102
But again, I mean, well, actually, I’ll leave it there.

508
00:49:15,702 –> 00:49:16,542
There’s so much to say on that.

509
00:49:16,542 –> 00:49:17,262
It’s a great question.

510
00:49:20,622 –> 00:49:21,422
Muted myself.

511
00:49:21,502 –> 00:49:24,862
[Asher Minns] Susie, I think I’m possibly last word to you, if I may.

512
00:49:25,982 –> 00:49:26,622
[Susie Wang] Yeah, thank you.

513
00:49:26,702 –> 00:49:27,502
And hi, Stuart.

514
00:49:27,502 –> 00:49:30,302
Great to sort of see you again.

515
00:49:31,022 –> 00:49:37,382
I would say, yeah, I think I found that quote interesting as well, also because it assumes that lifestyles will decrease in quality.

516
00:49:37,382 –> 00:49:42,462
And I think the question there is decrease in what way and for whom, which is kind of what Sam was saying as well.

517
00:49:42,862 –> 00:49:47,102
And in some ways, you could also point to the ways in which lifestyles would improve.

518
00:49:47,422 –> 00:49:56,942
For instance, if the work that we’ve done together, Stuart, with 15-minute lifestyles, with more equality, more comfortable environments, especially given the heat waves that we’ve been experiencing.

519
00:49:57,342 –> 00:50:05,342
So I think maybe in terms of narratives, it could also be about sort of shifting away from losing something, but towards just something different and more equal.

520
00:50:07,022 –> 00:50:08,462
[Asher Minns] Thank you very much.

521
00:50:08,462 –> 00:50:11,182
Thank you everybody for attending.

522
00:50:11,502 –> 00:50:16,782
Thank you Sam, Lucas and Susie for being such great presenters.

523
00:50:17,171 –> 00:50:31,371
I’m going to completely have not answered the question, just leave it hanging about the question of incoming burn and oil and gas North Sea licences because we just don’t have very long to wait to find out the answer to that one.

524
00:50:31,371 –> 00:50:36,971
So I don’t think we have to do any conjecture around what might be happening and it’s very difficult to tell

525
00:50:37,371 –> 00:50:40,971
who’s briefing who and in the media and things anyway.

526
00:50:41,131 –> 00:50:55,851
I did pick up from Carbon Brief, there’s been, I don’t know, three or four times more articles in the first six months talking about the need for oil and gas licensing in the North Sea than there was in all of last year.

527
00:50:56,811 –> 00:51:01,011
So, you know, there’s clearly some quite strong lobbying and placing of things.

528
00:51:01,011 –> 00:51:04,091
And actually, that wasn’t even articles, that was editorials.

529
00:51:04,411 –> 00:51:07,691
So, but we will wait and see what happens.

530
00:51:07,931 –> 00:51:09,371
So thank you, everybody.

531
00:51:09,451 –> 00:51:10,651
Thank you, speakers.

532
00:51:10,651 –> 00:51:12,531
Thank you, participants.

533
00:51:12,531 –> 00:51:14,411
I don’t like to think of you as an audience.

534
00:51:14,726 –> 00:51:15,926
I thank you all

535
00:51:16,646 –> 00:51:19,846
your support for all of us and thank you everybody and speakers.

536
00:51:20,326 –> 00:51:21,286
Have good afternoons.

537
00:51:21,286 –> 00:51:21,766
Thank you.