The poet Robert Frost once speculated whether the world would end in fire or ice. This summer has brought with it a cavalcade of terrifying images of the climate emergency, many of which would seem to heavily favour the former. The last week has provided shocking pictures of residents fleeing their homes on ferries from beaches on the burning Greek island of Evia and the United States and Canada continuing the fight against some of the largest wildfires they’ve ever seen. But it’s not all fire- floods in Europe have left at least 229 dead, intense drought afflicts much of Central Asia and the first signs are emerging of a potential collapse of the Gulf Stream.

It is perhaps then fitting that this week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published the first phase of its Sixth Assessment Report- the most complete statement of our knowledge of the current state of climate change. It makes suitably stark reading. The ambition of the Paris Climate Agreement to keep temperature rises below 1.5°c above pre-industrial levels looks likely to be breached, and some of the changes that have resulted from human activity are now both inevitable and irreversible.

To keep within the boundaries of the Paris Agreement, rapid and significant decreases in greenhouse gas emissions will be necessary in the next decade- without it the temperature rise might soar to 3-5°c, the upper end of which would be sufficiently significant to threaten humanity society as we understand it. The report also dramatically highlights the resultant increasing frequency of extreme weather events- such as the ones that have been causing global chaos in recent years.

One of the major problems with climate change is that it is a long-term problem, and is bedevilled by both short-term thinking and politics. Almost a century of attritional efforts by those who are willing to ignore the science and proclaim disbelief; and big money efforts by energy and mining companies to discredit the accepted science have delayed the response and given tiny, albeit illegitimate, hooks upon which prominent public figures can hang their scepticism and refusal to act.

This ‘scepticism’ precludes a stable long-term approach to dealing with the issues. This lack of long-term stability only does damage, and the truth is that there is no cause for it. Human driven climate change should not be controversial. The base science is settled, and the effects are becoming more and more visible and prominent. The other political problem is political short-termism. Fundamentally, most politicians are mostly interested in the future of the next election they’re standing in. Although the number of votes in climate change is increasing, it has still not reached a critical mass whereby it is a strict yes/no issue for most voters. With politicians mostly concerned about re-election chances the appropriate action to take becomes even less likely, as to put in place the sort of severe action that is truly necessary would lose votes, sacrificing the moral and right on the altar of politics.

Of course, it’s not just politicians that suffer from this logical position, a significant number of the population are also reluctant to make the changes needed in order to ensure long-term prosperity and survival. The ‘future generations’ that we need to help by making smaller sacrifices now are sufficiently distant to us that we are prepared to risk everything to live an easy life now. It’s nobody’s fault, this sort of short-termism is evolutionarily hard-wired into us- it’s the same reason that most people live such unhealthy lifestyles. Back when we were still chasing antelope across the Savannah, you never knew where or when you would next eat, so when food was plentiful, we evolved the mental drive to take advantage of it. Nowadays, food is plentiful (in the developed world at least), but that evolutionary drive is still present. Add that to a lack of chasing (even metaphorical) antelope across the savannah, and you have a lot of people evolutionarily driven to create an obesity and unhealthy lifestyle epidemic.

But where does consultation and engagement come into all this? With politicians compromised by circumstance, we would suggest it becomes incumbent on the general population to pick up the mantle. It is incumbent on all of us to act, both collectively and individually. Over the course of the last few years, we have seen many local authorities (and states) declaring climate emergencies, and whilst it is no doubt done with the best of intentions, too often no further real action is taken.

Where we have started to see movement is in consultation and engagement, in many different forms. Some councils have launched citizens assemblies, a somewhat unproven and expensive form of engagement that is often misunderstood; others have stuck to more tried and tested methods. It seems clear from the IPCC report that significant societal change is going to be necessary if we are to preserve the planet for future generations.

With change this major however it is vital to take the public with you, and robust public involvement with the development of policy and the reshaping of communities is not only vital, but can and should be a key driver of that policy. We have already discussed the risks of leaving it to the politicians alone, but if we as consultors can continue to do strong consultation and engagement, and critically involve more and more people in that, from a diverse range of communities, then the glacier of politics might start to be meaningfully shifted.

We don’t often talk about consultation as a driver for change, usually focussing on it as a mechanism through which change is achieved, a much narrower concept. Consultations are often used by politicians as a demonstrator of how much support is present for a proposal (or vice versa, in the case of opposition politicians). We’re always very cautious about this, because too often they look solely at the numbers, but a broader look not only at the numbers but also at what is being said by respondents could help to drive further change.

It is here where we should glance to the activities of campaigning groups such as Extinction Rebellion. Although their methods are generally of questionable effectiveness, and sufficiently irritating to the public that it is easy to motivate even those who mostly agree with their basic principles to oppose them, their idea of making themselves constantly heard has some degree of merit.

Bringing the two ideas together, we think there might be grounds for making more of the positive results of consultation and engagement activities on climate change related issues. Use them more in your outward facing comms, not just to inform ongoing change. Let the public’s voice be heard- and hopefully this might feed upwards to let politicians know the public’s views beyond the focus groups and polling preferred in the corridors of power.

Perhaps consider a move towards a more continuous engagement approach, where consultations on specific proposals and changes are just a part of an overarching effort to tackle the issue in your community. We want to see not only plans and strategies for consultation and engagement on climate change issues, but action. Let’s not stick to the old methods that lead us to an answer, but don’t develop the argument and solutions further. We have been consistently impressed over the course of the pandemic by the novel means of engagement on display across the country- what better cause could there be for continuing them than saving the world?