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The leaks and exposés about how media and communications were used to manipulate and control the public during the covid era are the focus of ongoing controversy, and rightly so. Yet a very similar approach persists, virtually unchallenged, in the sphere of climate communications. Indeed, key features of covid narrative control were pioneered in relation to the environment.

Years before “following the science” became the mantra of covid policy, it was the watchword of climate campaigners. It sounds like it should be a good thing, but in practice, it means enforcing the authority of a single narrative while delegitimising dissent as “misinformation” or “extremism.”

The following are excerpts from ‘Engineering Compliance: From Climate to Covid and Back Again’ written by Philip Hammond, Emeritus Professor of Media & Communications at London South Bank University, and published by Propaganda in Focus on 8 July 2023.

In June 2023 the newly-launched BBC Verify project, dedicated to “countering disinformation,” sharply denounced TikTok for failing to “clamp down on climate change denial.” The BBC team found “hundreds of videos … making false statements about climate change,” which they then reported to TikTok – though they noted with some satisfaction that “65 accounts that had been posting wrong information about climate change in breach of the platform’s guidelines were permanently removed” as a result of their work.

Perhaps some might turn a blind eye to the permanent closure of 65 people’s online accounts. The point, though, is the larger shift taking place – of which BBC Verify is merely one symptom.

Though covid narrative control may be the immediate inspiration for monitoring and banning climate-related “misinformation,” calls to delegitimise, even to criminalise, “climate deniers” long predates the pandemic.

Comparing “climate denial” with “Holocaust denial,” British environmentalist Mark Lynas suggested in 2006 that there should be “international criminal tribunals [for] those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths.” The same year, David Roberts, a writer for the climate website Grist, suggested “some sort of climate Nuremberg” for deniers. Perhaps such rhetoric is to be expected from self-righteous campaigners, but it takes on a more serious tone when it finds its way into the judicial sphere.

In 2013, US law professor William Tucker made a legal argument for prosecution, for example, while in 2015 in Britain, Philippe Sands KC argued that a ruling by the International Court of Justice would “settle the scientific dispute” about climate change.

It seems absurd to propose that the authority of judges should silence the claims of people who are “scientifically qualified” and “knowledgeable” to “settle the scientific dispute.” If nothing else, it is singularly unscientific. Yet even without the intervention of the courts, eminent scientists have been ostracised and cancelled if they stray from the official line.  Naturally, this has a wider chilling effect on scientific debate.

The environment was the first area where behavioural interventions were designed and adopted in Britain, on the grounds that simply providing information about environmental problems did not necessarily lead people to adopt the desired behaviours.

The government’s 2005 “sustainable-development strategy” introduced “a new approach to influencing behaviours based on recent research,” including a “toolkit for climate-change communications … designed to provide a model for future behaviour-change campaigns on other issues.” The document announced that Tony Blair’s administration was “establishing a ‘behaviour change’ forum across government departments” so that the “comprehensive behaviour-change model for policymaking,” which had been developed for environmental issues, could be “applied in all priority areas.”

A key person behind this new approach was David Halpern, who in 2004 had already offered recommendations to Blair on how “behavioural interventions” could provide “alternative, and perhaps more subtle, ways in which government might affect personal behaviour.” Halpern was then chosen by David Cameron to head the government’s Behavioural Insights Team – the so-called Nudge Unit – when it was established at the Cabinet Office in 2010.

The Behavioural Insights Team has since grown into a global company, but Halpern remains its president and continues to offer advice to the Government. During covid, he served on both SPI-B and SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Today, Halpern and the Behavioural Insights Team are working on ‘How to Build a Net Zero Society’, offering “a fresh consideration of how incentives, standards, nudges, labelling and public information can be brought together to drive decarbonisation as quickly as possible.”

The “nudgers” usually claim that the public is already basically on-board with whatever the policy goal happens to be, but just need some prompting to adjust their choices. The ‘How to Build a Net Zero Society’ report, for instance, claims that “consumers want this change in their own lives, at least in principle.” The focus of the UK government’s 2018 report, ‘Building the Political Mandate for Climate Action’, was how to get around the fact that “for the overwhelming majority of people, climate change is a non-issue.”

Similarly, a 2021 report from Counterpoint, a consultancy advising the EU on how to promote the European Green Deal, acknowledged that “there is little public consensus on climate policy.” Counterpoint was heartened that the covid pandemic had “revealed citizens readier than they once were for profound changes,” and that “attitudes are most easily ‘refashionable’ in people whose attitudes and emotions are ‘up for grabs’.”

The news media might be expected to act as a forum of public debate and democratic discussion, but they are committed to the same agenda. The UK broadcaster Sky, for example, commissioned a report from the Behavioural Insights Team on “nudging viewers to decarbonise their lifestyles.” The report admits that at least some viewers are likely to object, and offers advice on what type of content “makes viewers … less likely to argue with information they initially disagree with.” Children’s programming is seen as one promising route: the advice is to “use kids” content to encourage positive environmental behaviours’ since children are “important influencers on their parents.”

The idea of “embedding” and “normalising” behaviours across all kinds of programme content is typical of the nudge approach, which often emphasises the importance of making desired behaviours visible. As the Behavioural Insights Team explains: “Visibility plays a crucial role in encouraging the adoption of sustainable measures … [and] can raise awareness and promote a contagion effect.”

Traditionally, political communication was understood to involve engaging and convincing the public with distinctive ideas or policies. For projects of large-scale social change, the informed consent of the majority was thought to be necessary in a democratic society.  Today, winning people over to a set of ideas through rational discussion is plainly out of fashion. The goal is simply compliant behaviour. Dissent will be filtered out. Desired behaviours will be modelled and normalised.

If we wish still to be treated as rational political subjects, we must refuse to be “nudged” and we must refuse to be silenced.

Read the full essay ‘Engineering Compliance: From Climate to Covid and Back Again’ HERE.

Featured image: Have you been nudged? How behavioural science is subtly influencing us amid covid-19 (left), The Daily Climate Show on Sky News (right)