2025-06-19

 Published in the Winnipeg Free Press

19 June 2025

© Calvin J. Brown 2025

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Getting your attention — and keeping it

CALVIN BROWN

THERE'S a crucial element missing from our approach to fighting climate change. Without it, we might not manage to save ourselves. And by "ourselves," I mean "the human race."

We can analyze our planet's climate and project its future. We can produce documents describ¬ing those results. We can get countries to agree on the goals that must be reached. However, we seem frustratingly incompetent at achieving those goals. Scientists and the United Nations have been warning us of the general threat for decades. More specifically, we've known for years that exceeding a global increase of 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels is very dangerous. Last year our planet passed that mark, and yet we continue to be amazingly inattentive to curbing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We seem to blindly march on, oblivious to what awaits us and our descendants.

Why can't we remain focused on fixing a prob¬lem threatening the existence of our species? In our most recent provincial and federal elections, climate change issues were almost invisible. Poli¬ticians seem to have decided that climate matters aren't vote-getters. And they're probably right because, for most people, the dire consequences are too distant. Individuals struggle to focus on long-term goals. It's even harder for democracies. If lots of voters aren't passionate about an issue, it's not going to receive much political attention.

So, maybe that's essential for fixing climate change: Understand how to keep an influential majority of people focused on attaining a long-term goal.

I searched for a solution and discovered little that directly applied. I found lots of advice for individuals and companies, but nothing for democracies. Regardless, some of what I found can apply. "Ensure your long-term goal is clear," "subdivide it into a series of smaller goals with shorter timelines," and "measure your progress," can apply to democracies. Fortunately, the UN's IPCC and others have done that for climate goals.

The tricky advice is "stay motivated." Moti¬vating an individual or a company, through its executives, is possible due to the small number of key people. However, it's a different challenge to motivate huge numbers of people in a democracy for a long duration.

One obstacle is that other problems can distract people. It's hard to care about the world's future when you're struggling to feed your family or are constantly anxious about your safety. It's unrea¬sonable to think long-term repercussions can out-compete imminent concerns like starvation and serious injury. The UN's list of Sustainable Development Goals targets both climate change and other problems like these. Of course, its other goals also require people's long-term motivation.

Even while you're addressing those other ones, how do you foster and sustain motivation about climate goals? Since I couldn't find a recom¬mendation, I created my own. It's designed to make people feel both the urgency of the cli¬mate-change threat and the importance of their own actions. It recognizes that people love to believe they aren't the problem and that the only solution is for others to clean up their act. Of course, that's nonsense. Our own actions can both help reduce GHGs and influence those "others" to do the same.

To sustain people's motivation, we need an intensive, lengthy public-messaging campaign. The messages should forcefully attribute the distant consequences to what we do now. Make the messages obvious and ensure they're encoun¬tered frequently. That might be via social media, TV ads or skywriting. Experts can decide those details. I'll simply talk about billboards. Huge, always-in-your-face billboards.

The "billboards" would convey simple, emo¬tional messages about the climate crisis, the need to act and influence others, our recent progress and the implications of that progress. Its essence could be: "A climate disaster is threatening hu¬manity. To avoid it, we must eliminate our GHG emissions and convince others to do the same. In 2023, Canada reduced its emissions by only 0.9 per cent. If the world progresses at that rate, today's children will experience more intense droughts, more frequent wildfires and more insect-borne diseases." Of course, media profes¬sionals could vastly improve the presentation.

The billboard messages could be for any po¬litical region or economic sector, should change frequently to highlight different examples of the many looming consequences, should appear everywhere and should be much more effective than my simple statements. The intent would be to concisely, vividly and viscerally portray the threat and to link our current actions with the future consequences. The danger must be made to feel clear and present.

If this were done for years or decades, peo¬ple might become and remain more motivated. Perhaps they would more readily accept changes in their lives, and perhaps they would ensure that politicians make fighting climate change their top priority. Perhaps there would be a reason for opti¬mism about the future awaiting today's children.

Calvin Brown writes from his home in the RM of St. Andrews.