Everyday climate action: What’s preventing behaviour change?

Although everyday behaviour change may not be sufficient to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, it plays a vital role, including in encouraging and facilitating systems change. This half-day conference will launch a new EPA-funded, ESRI report titled What is preventing individual climate action? Impact awareness and perceived difficulties in changing transport and food behaviour. The conference will present new evidence on impediments to everyday climate action while discussing limitations of relying on individual choice. 

The conference will also feature updates from work-in-progress on three EPA-funded reports that investigate (1) the use of person-centred theoretical models in understanding attitudes to climate action, (2) how collective action frameworks can encourage pro-environmental behaviour and (3) where there are gaps in the application of behavioural science to climate policy. 

The conference will close with a keynote address by Prof. Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Prof. Whitmarsh is the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations at the University of Bath, UK. She is an environmental psychologist and specialises in climate change perceptions and behaviour. She is a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Working Group II and regularly advises governmental and other organisations on low-carbon behaviour change and climate change communication.