Within KNOWING we aim at enabling and accelerating transformation by considering both climate Hashtag#adaptation and Hashtag#mitigation. Because even though climate change impacts are observed almost daily, measures to adapt to and to mitigate climate change are still being implemented far too slow – but why?
The arguments used to downplay or ignore the urgent need for action are manifold. They range from outright denial of the reality or human causation of climate change, to attacks on the scientific consensus as well as to discourses of “climate delay” that encourage the slowdown process by conveying a sense of insurmountable obstacles to taking action. The latter represent different positions on what and whether action should be taken at all, how quickly, who should bear responsibility and where costs and benefits should be distributed. Those discourses of delay and denial can be divided into four categories of “redirecting responsibility”, “pushing non-transformative solutions”, “emphasising the downsides” of climate policy or “surrendering” to climate change.
In the coming 12 weeks, KNOWING will address these policy-focused discourses on the delay of climate actions occurring across different sources, actors and contexts. By taking a closer look at and evaluating their arguments brought forth, we will show why they do not stand up and therefore do not provide a justification for doing nothing. In this way, KNOWING contributes to depriving common climate deniers’ claims of their argumentation basis and support all of us in creating a reference point for combating misinformation.
