Meeting 3: Health Impacts

Last week was the third in our series of meetings on Communicating Climate Change, focussing on health impacts in the UK, and the psychological basis for communication.

Speaker 1:
Bernd Eggen
Health Protection Agency

Bernd introduced the basic facts about climate change, and highlighted three of the ten health impacts of climate change included in the recent 3rd HPA report on the subject (link below). He focussed on extreme temperatures, air pollution and ultra-violet radiation, as these are three impacts with which he is  particularly familiar.

I found it interesting to hear him point out that there are different audiences that might be targetted with different messages / communication. He mentioned that the elderly in the UK were particularly affected by cold spells - not just mean temperatures, but by particularly long periods of cold weather. He also mentioned that some of the areas that are most affected by air pollution (specifically ozone) were those living in suburban areas - as emissions from the centre of urban areas tended to disperse to these. Lastly, he talked about the need for different messages concerning UV exposure to different age groups. For the elderly, more sun exposure could be beneficial for health. For the young, however, increasing exposure to UV could lead to higher rates of conditions like skin cancer developing in later life.


Speaker 2:
Adam Corner
Cardiff University

Adam also talked about different groups of people - this time in terms of characteristics that are associated with denial of climate change. Typically, it is characteristics like being male, white and older that are linked to the highest levels of scepticism. Also, those who are the most vocal supporters of a free market economy are more likely to also be sceptical about man-made (anthropogenic) climate change.

However, he also thought that health-related messages might be able to reach this challenging group of people. It's already been suggested that linking energy-saving behaviours to saving money instead of reducing climate change can sometimes be an effective strategy (although not always).

Adam also talked about the idea that people have a "finite pool of worry" and that climate change often gets pushed down below other, more pressing concerns such as financing every day needs and social concerns. He mentioned that climate change as an issue is "psychologically distant" - in the sense that it is something that happens very gradually, with the most severe effects always seeming far in the future - but also physically distant (there will be greater effects in other countries) and also distant in the sense that it is very intangible (difficult to link individual events specifically to climate change).

Discussions

After the talks, we had a short discussion on how climate change health impacts might best be communicated, and what the research needs are in this area.

We returned briefly to the theme of audience that had already been mentioned by both speakers. We discussed how challenging audiences such as climate deniers might be approached by talking about health co-benefits, as has previously been suggested with money-saving co-benefits. We also talked about different groups such as older people, those at risk of floods and people living in places with higher concentrations of ozone needing specialist communications, and research needed to show what works best for those specific groups.

Different messages that could be employed were discussed at greater length. As well as health co-benefits of climate change reduction (mitigation) strategies, we talked about adaptation (what people will need to do to adapt to changes in climate). We talked about needing to know what is already understood about climate change health impacts, so that specific messages can be developed to address knowledge gaps in particular groups. It was also mentioned that the use of multiple messaging could be effective - since different types of people might respond better to different messaging within the same communications.

Lastly, we briefly mentioned different media that could be used to convey and communicate (two/multi-way) information on climate change health impacts. We acknowledged that more needed to be said about this, but the time available was limited. There was a feeling that collecting together good examples of climate change communication using different media could be valuable resource. Hopefully the next Communicating Climate Change meeting on the 15th April at the AIR building, Tremough Campus in Penryn could address this need. The workshop session will be part of the Air Pressure week, showcasing creative works that communicate climate change.

Presentation slides:

Bernd Eggen:

Adam Corner:



References/resources

Bernd's talk included links to a number of resources on climate change health impacts, included here for convenience:

Health Protection Agency
Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2012
http://www.hpa.org.uk/hecc2012

Department of Health original report (2001) & update (2008)
Health effects of climate change in the UK
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_080702
http://www.dh.gov.uk/

Climate Change Risk Assessmet report (2012), Health section
Summary:
http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRASummaryHealth.pdf
Full report:
http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRAfortheHealthSector.pdf

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change SREX report (2012)
Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/

European Environment Agency (2012)

Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012

http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/climate-impacts-and-vulnerability-2012

World Health Organisation & World Meteorological Organisation

Atlas of Health and Climate http://www.wmo.int/ebooks/WHO/Atlas_EN_web.pdf


Books:

- The Health Practitioner's Guide to Climate Change: Diagnosis and Cure (2009)

- Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do About It (2011)

Chasing Ice

I went to see the Chasing Ice film a couple of weeks ago - a film about photographer James Balog's quest to record melting arctic ice. From the trailer, it looked like the focus would be on time-lapse photography, and recording the beautiful icescapes of the area:


I was expecting something like an extended version of the "how we filmed this" section of Frozen Planet.

However, the film had a much stronger climate change message than I had thought - that humans are causing climate change and it is affecting polar ice melt in potentially disastrous ways. This is rather more evident in this short clip from the film:


I wonder if this is intentional - to lure people into seeing the film on the basis of the beautiful photography and technical challenge of capturing time lapse photography of the glaciers melting, and then hitting the audience with the message once they are there...

Sushi anyone?

It's not specifically related to climate change, but I think this Surfrider campaign illustrates their message in a powerful way. The contrast of the delicate foodstuff with waste is a visceral reminder of the contamination of seafood. I have a feeling that the image might well come back to haunt you just before tucking into that plate of sushi you've just ordered... Although this "disgust" reaction might be more effective at stopping people from eating seafood, rather than their intended "call to action" (look at this website).

As the World Tipped

I've just been reading about an "aerial theatre" performance called As the World Tipped. The show apparently uses a vertical stage - with actors suspended using harnesses and wires. It seems to use back projection and music and, yes, dangling actors, to tell an apocalyptic story based on themes of climate change and bureaucracy:

http://www.tippingpoint.org.uk/as-the-world-tipped/

While the gimmick of the tilting stage may or may not be to your tastes, I found it interesting to see some of the lengths that producers will go to to attract attention on these issues. I think the themes of the performance also highlight an increasing frustration felt by some artists and communicators about the slow progress from official organisations.

Climate CoLab at MIT

Over at MIT in the US, a project called Climate CoLab is investigating the power of online collaboration to suggest "what to do about climate change". The resulting website is somewhere between a moderated discussion forum and a voting tool for ideas to combat global warming:

http://climatecolab.org/

I wonder what kind of people contribute to such projects - I'm assuming it will mostly be people who are very strongly engaged with climate change already, and as such it must be challenging to involve a representative group of people in discussion / voting activity.

Further information, and some working papers linked to the project are available here:

http://cci.mit.edu/research/climate.html

They do note that initially, some unrealistic ideas (such as reducing emissions by 99% in all countries by 2050%) tended to get the most votes (which may give some suggestions about the kind of people that are involved in voting). They have worked around this by getting expert climate scientists to review the suggestions and provide a shortlist for voting, however.

Climate Challenge puts the player in the hot seat

I've had a few "educational" computer games inflicted on me in my time. I have to admit, however, to enjoying this free flash game, commissioned by the BBC and made by Red Redemption games, in consultation with researchers at Oxford University:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/index_1.shtml

It's starting to look a little dated now (it was made in 2006), but it is still an interesting way of giving the player a new perspective on the struggles of decision-makers trying to balance economy, environment, resources and popularity.

I found that my political views and opinions definitely affected the policies I chose. There were times when it would have made sense, game-wise, to invest in intensive farming to get more food, but it wasn't something I wanted to do... I also wonder how much the political leanings of the creators affected the values assigned to the different policies - particularly when talking about how 'popular' different things would be.

I've also downloaded a full game by the same authors, but haven't found time to play it much yet:

http://fateoftheworld.net/

chalking up a street's energy usage

This chalk stencil approach has been used in Brighton to show the average daily energy use of a street, compared to the Brighton average. An interesting way of making the invisible visible - something that I believe information graphics are particularly good at.

More details here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/apr/12/energy-use-households-monitor-electricity