A House of Lords report has recommended that the UK government use covid-19 style information campaigns to tackle climate change. The report claims that people must be convinced to change their behaviours if the UK is to hit net zero targets.
According to the BBC:
Information campaigns like those used in the Covid-19 pandemic would help individuals act on climate change, a House of Lords report has said.
To meet climate goals, a third of cuts to UK emissions by 2035 must come from people changing their behaviour, it says.
It calls the government’s current approach “seriously inadequate”.
In response the government said it is fully committed to its legally binding net zero climate goals.
The House of Lords report also advises government to financially support people to move to greener diets, transport and homes.
But calls to drive behaviour changes are at odds with Prime Minister Liz Truss’s focus on not intervening in people’s lives.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, or what to think or how to live your life,” she told the Conservative party conference.
Ms Truss also ruled out a public information campaign to reduce energy use this winter.
“People will have different lifestyles and make different choices about what changes they need to make, but we’re quite clear that people need to be helped to take this forward,” Baroness Kate Parminter, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, which wrote the report, told BBC News.
The Covid-19 pandemic provided important lessons in how to communicate clearly, using science, to the public, she said.
“Covid was a crisis, the climate is a crisis. We can learn some very important messages around the communications and the scale of the problem,” she adds.
Transport, food and energy are the key areas where we will need to change our behaviour, the report says.
It recommends the government provide grants so people can switch to electric cars, and that it make it much easier to cycle and walk instead of driving.
The committee strongly urges the government to consider a frequent-flyer levy, which charges regular flyers more.
