Dumbo Feather – February 2019

Did he come round
on anything?

Wow. Okay.

So then the art of changing someone’s mind. [Laughs].

What did you learn about that? Is it in having the

conversation, spending so much time with one another?

people watching it who haven’t yet made up their mind on climate change or if I say something

dumb, it casts a bad light on the whole climate movement. So it was a lot of pressure. It went

out and over a million people watched it. And then there was a special episode of Q&A on it.

So that was scary, saying yes to that and then doing it. Being filmed every day for four weeks

for a reality TV show with a former politician who, of course, was media trained and very

used to being around cameras. But that, I think, turned out reasonably well in that I got a lot

of letters and emails from people who’d watched it and said that actually they learned things

they didn’t know, and they were more motivated to take action on climate change.

He moved a little bit. When Nick started he said, “Climate change is not happening.

And if it is, humans have not caused it. And then by the end he said, “Climate change is

happening. And humans are ‘probably responsible’ for ‘part’ of it.”

It was a shift. And the reason I think he did acknowledge that was because it was during a

meeting I had organised with a conservative UK politician, Zac Goldsmith, where Nick felt

like he was amongst someone who shared his values on everything else. So he didn’t feel

threatened. And also at the end, you know the question I asked Nick that actually enabled

us to find some common ground was, “Well if you were a young person who was concerned

about climate change, what would you be doing?” And he said, “I would be focusing on why

we need to transition to renewable energy. Because there’s lots of reasons why coal is bad

for you. Bad for health. And there are lots of opportunities in renewables.” And then we

were able to have quite a productive conversation about transitioning to renewable energy.

Because ultimately we do need people on the conservative side of politics to be engaged

in this. Otherwise we’ll just get progress that is short-term. The UN IPCC report that came

out last year said we have 11 years to turn things around on climate change. Do we think it’s

feasible there will be no more Liberal governments at a state or federal level in the next 11

years? If not, we have to figure out a way to shift them.

I think it’s finding messengers that the other

person trusts.

And we’ve learned that now from seeing the filter bubble effect and fake news and the rise

of so much misinformation out there—people aren’t looking at the accuracy of information.

If they feel like they agree ideologically with where the information is coming from, whether

it’s a friend or a news outlet, then they’ll just accept it, which is alarming. But it also

means that we need climate change messengers amongst a really broad range of diverse

communities who can put those messages in ways that make sense to those groups.

Oh, I just thought of another example where I felt like I needed to be courageous. A few years

ago I was running Earth Hour and doing climate campaigning work with WWF Australia. And

I took my team to Newcastle to be part of this nonviolent direct action blocking the coal port

with kayaks, led by the Pacific climate warriors with 350.org. There were two things that I did

that day that needed courage. One was actually taking my team down to participate in this

direct action, which was not really in line with the policies of WWF, my employer. Maybe you

The messenger is way more important than

the message.

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