Mobilising Climate Action: Lessons from COVID-19

This is the first presentation in the 2022 Environmental Resilience lecture series, which is co-organised by the IIEA and the EPA. On this occasion, Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, MBE, Director of the UK Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), delivers a keynote address. Professor Whitmarsh draws lessons from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that can mobilise public action on climate change. Both climate change and the pandemic require significant behavioural changes and have certain features in common, but there are also important differences - and reasons to think responding to climate change will be more challenging. Professor Whitmarsh shows that, through targeted communication and a range of policy measures, significant behaviour changes to mitigate climate change can be achieved, as it was in the response to the crisis of COVID-19. About the Speaker: Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, MBE, is Director of the ESRC-funded UK Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST). She is an environmental psychologist, specialising in perceptions and behaviour in relation to climate change, energy, and transport, based in the Department of Psychology, University of Bath. Professor Whitmarsh regularly advises governmental and other organisations on low-carbon behaviour change and climate change communication. She was one of the expert leads for Climate Assembly UK and is Lead Author for IPCC’s Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report. Her research projects have included studies of meat consumption, energy efficiency behaviours, waste reduction and carrier bag reuse, perceptions of smart technologies and electric vehicles, low-carbon lifestyles, and responses to climate change.