Originally published on the CGS blog on November 3, 2014.
Climate change is one of the bigger global issues of our time; just last month, over 400,000 people marched in New York City during the Climate Summit to call for immediate action. Despite the very real effects of climate change, and the various ways in which the issue has been framed, 71 percent of people say they “are less likely to take action on climate change because they’re unsure of the difference their actions will make.” As it turns out, skepticism over the solutions to climate change is just as big a barrier to action as skepticism over the science behind it.
That is one of the main issues with climate change messaging: it tends to focus on the problem rather than the solution(s). This has a direct impact on the public’s opinion regarding climate change; polling showed that two out of three people would be more inclined to support climate action if they heard more about the solutions.
The current messaging isn’t just depressing, it’s misleading – climate change solutions can be found all over the world! From something as simple as a bike-sharing app in Canada to something as novel as solar-powered school boats in Bangladesh, solutions are everywhere. We just have to be aware of them.
This is the goal of the #itshappening project: to create “a call to celebrate how far we’ve come and, to step up our ambition for the future.” By sharing examples of climate change progress from around the world using pictures and social media, #itshappening tries to “[fight] fatalism with hope, and [counter] apathy with agency.”
But it isn’t just about showing that there are solutions, it’s about showing that they aren’t all high-tech achievements. Take the Nigerian initiative Wecyclers: by providing recycling pick-up via bicycles, the program allows participating families to exchange garbage for consumer goods using an SMS-based point system. With an estimated only 46 percent of all municipal solid waste in Africa being collected, this program could have big implications for the future. Currently, more than 5,000 households in the start-up city have signed up, and there are plans to expand the program to other cities throughout Nigeria. A simple answer to a critical program, Wecyclers shows that solutions do not have to be hi-tech to be effective:
Initiatives might be low-tech in innovation, but high-impact when it comes to create sustainable change for entire communities.
And yet there are still barriers that make climate action seem daunting. With the current market design making something as simple as using a 90 percent recycled drink can unappealing to big brands such as Coca-Cola or PepsiCo, it would appear that widespread sustainability is still a ways off. How then do we make climate action something people rally behind rather than question? Following the lead of #itshappening, we need to make climate change solutions well known and widely publicized; moreover, we need to acknowledge the simple innovations that could be implemented easily on a larger scale. People need to see not only that solutions are possible, but also that they already exist. Finally, we need an international call to action and a consensus on what we each can do to better our planet and make the most of our resources.
As Mal Chadwick, the creator and curator of #itshappening notes,
The biggest threat to progress is cynicism – resigning ourselves to climate change because we don’t think we’re up to the task of fixing it.
