Climate Policy, Psychology and Indicators

Our project springs out of two interrelated observations: 1. The "psychological climate paradox": Whilst natural sciences are producing ever-more compelling evidence that anthropogenic forcing creates an increasingly unstable global climate, public aware ness of and interest in climate change has been declining in recent years. How can we explain the increasing discrepancy between the scientific urgency and low support for climate policies? Which psychological, social and cultural-narrative processes will be helpful in reducing the observed dissonance between individuals' knowledge of the subject-matter and the corresponding attitudes and actions? 2. Developing indicators to reflect new narratives: The quest for economic growth lies at the heart of the m an-made contribution to global warming. The ubiquitous reliance on economic indicators and the methodological difficulties with viewing global warming as externalities in economic models have aggravated the overshoot of natural limits. How can we design i ndicators that are experienced by broad citizen groups as meaningful and pragmatically useful when developing and evaluating climate policy at individual, social and national levels? The two planned seminars will use a participatory process based on new methodologies within climate policy research, that are more psychological, embodied and targeting the experience of communication rather than the rational information approach alone. Our project brings environmental psychology and participatory methods i nto Norwegian climate policy research. It brings 'new voices' into the climate discourse to develop meaningful indicators that can help climate policy development.