[MCN] Civil disobedience is raising public awareness of climate emergency

[Lance Olsen]

Global Change Biology March 2020
 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14978 <https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14978>

Civil disobedience movements such as School Strike for the Climate are raising public awareness of the climate change emergency
Stephen J. Thackeray <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Thackeray%2C+Stephen+J>  Sharon A. Robinson <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Robinson%2C+Sharon+A>  Pete Smith <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Smith%2C+Pete>  Rhea Bruno <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Bruno%2C+Rhea>  Miko U. F. Kirschbaum <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Kirschbaum%2C+Miko+U+F>  Carl Bernacchi <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Bernacchi%2C+Carl>  Maria Byrne <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Byrne%2C+Maria>  William Cheung <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Cheung%2C+William>  M. Francesca Cotrufo <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Cotrufo%2C+M+Francesca>  Phillip Gienapp <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?ContribAuthorStored=Gienapp%2C+Phillip> … See all authors  <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#>

<<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978>>>

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Extended excerpt
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C” presented the ambitious target of needing to achieve zero net emissions by 2050 in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (IPCC, 2018 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-bib-0006>). This report led some governments and jurisdictions to declare a climate emergency (Climate Emergency Declaration, 2019 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-bib-0004>) and prompted the rise of movements of activism and civil disobedience such as the School Strike for the Climate and Extinction Rebellion. The reach of these civil actions extends beyond those directly involved, potentially increasing wider public awareness of climate change. Here, we examine trends in indicators of this wider public awareness and engagement and compare these with major global movements of civil disobedience focussed on climate, the release of substantive climate reports, and global governmental gatherings on climate change. We show that these global movements may be increasing public awareness of, and stimulating public engagement with, issues of climate change.

It is not easy to accurately measure public awareness and engagement with the issue of climate change at a global scale. We use two sources of information as indicators of that engagement. First, we used data on the scaled relative frequency of pertinent terms in Google searches ("global warming," "climate change," "climate action," "climate emergency," "climate crisis," downloaded from Google Trends on October 31, 2019, https://www.google.com/trends <https://www.google.com/trends>). Second, we used data on mentions of the terms "climate change" and "global warming" by the global media, assembled by the Media and Climate Change Observatory, MeCCO (Boykoff et al., 2019 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-bib-0003>, downloaded on December 4, 2019). These sources provide monthly data on the attention paid to climate change by anyone searching the internet (from the Google data), and by the newspapers, radio, and television (from the MeCCO data).

We focus on 2017 onwards; a period that includes the recent rise in activism and civil disobedience associated with climate change. Although there exists substantial month‐to‐month variation, both data sources show an overall increase in public engagement with climate change, especially after mid‐2018 (Figure 1 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-fig-0001>). The Google search data also suggest an interesting evolution of the language of climate change. While the relative popularity of the search term "global warming" has shown little systematic change, public interest in “climate action” has increased greatly since 2018. In addition, "climate crisis" and "climate emergency" have become popular search terms since early 2019. Peaks in internet searches for these specific terms coincide with the first and second global school strikes, and New York Climate Week (Figure 1 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-fig-0001>a). Searches for “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” were rare before 2019, but the use of these search terms increased 20‐fold during that year. Furthermore, these last two terms have become four‐ to fivefold more common than searches for “global warming” and may be displacing the latter as a common standard for public discourse (Figure 1 <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14978#gcb14978-fig-0001>a). Newspaper, radio, and television reports on climate change have also increased over this time, doubling since mid‐2018

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“Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. 
Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition 
as a result of human influence."

Barnovsky et al. Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere. Nature Volume 486, 07 June 2012
<<https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11018>>

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