Mitigating climate change via effective communication
Some of the most memorable climate change events of 2018 include the biennial Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT) conference held in Melbourne, Australia; and the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) held in Katowice, Poland. In a world where we are constantly faced with powerful natural disasters ranging from devastating hurricanes, floods, wildfires; as well […]
Some of the most memorable climate change events of 2018 include the biennial Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT) conference held in Melbourne, Australia; and the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) held in Katowice, Poland. In a world where we are constantly faced with powerful natural disasters ranging from devastating hurricanes, floods, wildfires; as well as non-natural tragedies such as famine, illegal migrations, and local and regional conflicts;which can all be correlated to the effect of climate change,it is always important that attention is given to the bigger picture, of which when we lose sight of it by allowing climate change implications to go unrestrained, then these devastating events will be more regular, more severe, and even more difficult to predict.
At the heart of these continuing climate change discussions, there has been a resolve to constantly build on existing knowledge and commitments of the last deliberations, and to also advance solutions and spread out cooperative frameworks. Next to the ever-expandingalliances within governments, scientists, universities, businesses and individuals who are assertive that global warming can be mitigated, it seems that 2018 was a decisive year in the global effort to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to a changing world.
As a researcher on an emerging technology for the mitigation of climate change, I was privileged to attend the GHGT conference of 2016 that held in the French-speaking, Swiss city on the shores of Lake Geneva: Lausanne! In the conference, I had the privilege of both presenting a scientific paper and meeting, listening to, and engaging with academics, researchers, industry specialists and policymakers involved in different scientific, technological and socioeconomic efforts to mitigate climate change.
The conference was the 13th in a series of biennial conferences on GHGT under the stewardship of the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development programme (IEAGHG) which is an international collaborative research programme established in 1991 under the International Energy Agency. At the very least, the GHGT conferences are an opportunity for engagements in and deliberations on the emerging yet significant portfolio of research; in a bid to help meet global emission reduction targets. At the end of the Lausanne Conference, it seemed to me that the main policy talks revolved mainly on technology deployment globally-to boost investor and public confidence that climate change mitigation technologies such as carbon capture and storage is viable and is worth the effort that is being put into it.
Without doubt, confidence on technology deployment and economic viability is crucial to the success ofcarbon capture and storage projects around the world; such as addressing some uncertainties within storage systems itself, the economics of GHG transportation over long distances before storage is enabled, the thorough assessments of storage sites to prevent undesirable events such as induced seismic activities, etc. However, notwithstanding these challenges, central to carbon capture and storage implementation, it seemed to me, lies in effective communication. It appears that of all the problems faced by our climate change mitigation efforts, public perception and acceptability of the technology ranks highest. This low level of public awareness must be the most important reason why technology deployment has been unnecessarily slowthe world over. To this extent, the success of climate change mitigation technologies may be greatly advanced if mechanisms exist to sufficiently aid the public embracing of such technologies. This may be achieved by developing some type of scientist-policymaker-public communication strategies.
Interestingly, at the GHGT conference held in Melbourne this year, the need for effective communication, which was highlighted in a paper I published in the scientific journalApplied Energy, was in good agreement with the outcome of the conference. Panel discussants suggested that there is need to create the right narratives around carbon capture and storage for the common objective of climate change mitigation. The discussions encourage future research on communication! It also suggests that to overcome the challenge on public perception, better communicative practices must be implemented such as by enhancing social and technologically mediated information flows through which informed opinion circulates.
But it must be stated that the campaign to sensitize the public should not be targeted on the citizen as an individual only. There should be an increasing focus to seek out key political figurestoo, as much as the public, as support from both categories are necessary for successful implementation. Probably, the most effective way of spurring the political leaders to action is by showing them the real severity of the problems that global warming pose. If they realize the magnitudes of these severities, then it will be obvious that all climate change mitigation technologies will not be easily overlooked. We must not forget, though, that the relative success of the renewable energy technologies has been said to be largely attributed to vigorous lobbying; and this case may not be too different from theGHG emission reduction technologies.
In the end, while it has been a busy and eventful year for the GHG mitigation technology, next year 2019, can be expected to be even more eventful with strategies emerging to bring about low carbon clusters. And being a leader in GHG research and development (although with no real-life demonstration projects into the bargain), if the United Kingdom’s offer to host the next COP 26 comes to fruition in 2020, then there will be very massive urgencies to bring major developments on climate change mitigation to the negotiating table.