Everyday climate action: What’s preventing behaviour change?

Although everyday behaviour change may not be sufficient to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, it plays a vital role, including in encouraging and facilitating systems change. This half-day conference will launch a new EPA-funded, ESRI report titled What is preventing individual climate action? Impact awareness and perceived difficulties in changing transport and food behaviour. The conference will present new evidence on impediments to everyday climate action while discussing limitations of relying on individual choice. 

The conference will also feature updates from work-in-progress on three EPA-funded reports that investigate (1) the use of person-centred theoretical models in understanding attitudes to climate action, (2) how collective action frameworks can encourage pro-environmental behaviour and (3) where there are gaps in the application of behavioural science to climate policy. 

The conference will close with a keynote address by Prof. Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Prof. Whitmarsh is the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations at the University of Bath, UK. She is an environmental psychologist and specialises in climate change perceptions and behaviour. She is a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Working Group II and regularly advises governmental and other organisations on low-carbon behaviour change and climate change communication.

 

Event Programme

13:30

Registration and Light Lunch

14:00

Welcome Address

Prof. Pete Lunn, ESRI 

14:05

EPA Address

Dr Eimear Cotter, EPA

14:10

Climate Change in the Irish Mind

Dr Des O’ Mahony, EPA

14:20

Overview of Report with Q&A

Dr Shane Timmons, ESRI

15:00

Coffee Break

15:15

Person-centred models

Dr Aisling Bourke, DCU

15:25

Collective action problems

Dr Lucie Martin, ESRI 

15:35

Policy gap analysis

Prof. Leo Lades, University of Stirling

15:45

Behaviour change for net zero

Prof. Lorraine Whitmarsh, University of Bath

In this talk, I will argue that most of the measures required to reach our climate change targets require at least some degree of behaviour change. And that more broadly, social transformation is required to reach ’net zero’ carbon targets in the coming years. In order to achieve this, we need public engagement and participation in decision-making about what a low-carbon future looks like, and how to reach it. We also need a wide range of measures to change people’s behaviour at home, work and elsewhere. I will present findings from polls and citizens assemblies on public concern about climate change, and support for net zero policies; and from behavioural science research on how to effectively change behaviour to cut emissions.

16:15

Panel Discussion and Q&A

17:00

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