My car, my home, my job

Read the policy document “My car, my home, my job: how to reconcile climate policies with people’s needs and how to generate consensus”

Read the policy briefing

By 2030, the European Union must achieve a net CO2 emission reduction target of 55%, which, to date, will require a huge step up in the current decarbonisation rate. It is necessary in order to keep the global temperature below the 1,5°C compared to preindustrial level, as agreed by the Union and its Member States in the Paris Agreement.

To address this challenge, the EU is devising policy toolkits that Member States will need to take seriously and swiftly implement, conscious of an electorate that is deeply aware of the necessity of an ecological transition in the fight against climate change and that would support concrete measures to cut emissions. However, to gain consensus across the whole political spectrum, climate policies need to serve other purposes aside reducing emissions: climate issues are entrenched within the structure of our society and therefore climate related policies need to have broader ambition and wider reach. Hence, political consensus is tied hand in hand with climate policies ability to tackle also economic disparities, inequalities and designing industrial policies that look at regions and areas of (actual and potential) crisis and increase quality of jobs. Anything less leaves climate policies exposed to actors with an interest in manipulating the idea behind a socially sustainable transition.

Climate policies cannot but tackle also structural imbalances of our social and economic system, which has been the trigger for exploring, in this work, how to reconcile the policy level with society’s needs. Political forces have an opportunity to push forward an ambitious political vision that answer to the need of a society ready to be part of this transformation – if given the right chances and conditions. People involvement and participation in designing a new socio-economic model that enhance our common goods will eventually reverse a dangerous trend of abstentionism that has caught on at national and at European level.

The explorative work conducted during the past six months has helped understanding some of the complexity and contradiction that characterises our time, where a shared need for profound transformation is not met with political action nor social consensus. The analysis of more than 4000 answers to our questions posed during our qualitative research phase (i.e. online diaries) and screening of more than 7 million social media posts allowed to identify recurrent elements at the core of people’s needs such as cooperation and dialogue across stakeholders, strategy coherence, education, social awareness, the need for socially responsible policies and a call to reducing complexity. The qualitative data collection delved into people’s everyday life, bringing to the surface all the commonplaces and contradictions that characterise the climate conversation: facts (costs and other obstacles related to certain transition processes), incomprehension and political inconsistency.

There is a clear lack of policies able to smoothly guide people when faced with the high costs of the transition, a tight timeframe and other barriers. What we see instead, is a narrative and a political strategy very randomly organised that gives society information disjointed from the overall picture, which contributes to the general feeling of helplessness and eco-anxiety. Disregarding this aspect means that climate objectives will never be seen as opportunities and political proposals, especially those with a tight timeframe, will always be met with scepticism and fear. Political proposals, on their side, need to clearly frame what is expected from people and other stakeholders, according to their ability to contribute.

A context thus outlined, revealed the need to deconstruct our society and start a difficult work of rebuilding it within well-defined socio-economic categories: specific needs require targeted policies, which in turn demand a matrix capable of showing how and to what extent specific groups can contribute to achieving climate and social goals. A clear narrative and overall strategy (referred to as “framework of reference”) based on common principles underlying people’s perception and reality (coherence, cooperation, education, etc.) ensures that such specific policies are understood and find space within the bigger narrative of a socially just green transition.

Finally, the work conducted so far showed that there is an important space to foster smart and responsible communication around climate change and decarbonisation processes. If media and politicians can fill this space, using the same principles highlighted above, people will finally be able to understand what’s their role in this transition and how important is each and every contribution within the general framework.

We firmly believe that this structural work will be essential to understand how public consensus on important policy packages, such as the Green Deal, is formed and to foster and spread wider responsibility around our common good. This document is a first contribution to support policy makers in finding the right tools to interpret the needs of our society along the process of transition away from fossil fuel, as well as building a consensus based political proposal and a shared framework of reference based on the principles outlined in this document. Further, it opens a season of social studies aimed at exploring social, economic and cultural drivers of behaviours in relation to climate action: a matrix in the form of a taxonomy of society to design needs-based climate policies and a consensus gap index to monitor support of Europeans towards climate targets.