politics – We need new stories…

I’ve just done a thought exercise where I was trying to imagine what I’d do on day one if I were put in charge of all of the things in government and it fried my brain. It created a real tension between my understanding of what changes are needed to generate change – systemic and cultural shifts which lead to cascading and tangible changes, with my sense of what politicians are looking for – tangible things that sound good even if they don’t really deliver anything meaningful. Beyond hurting my head, it was a good reminder of why change can be hard for politicians to enact.

Even just pretending to play the part of a politican made me feel I had to silence all of those parts of my brain that think how politics tends to operate isn’t helping, and I started to grab around for something that felt like a ‘good answer’. Trying to think about how I could turn something systemic, which also recognised the limits of government responsibility, into something that was shiny and press release worthy. I think that a big issue in the retrofit sector particularly is the extent to which it looks to government to create and fund the conditions for scale, and that in itself undermines the conditions for scale. That means more government isn’t going to help, and indeed can undermine the cultural and attitudinal changes needed, albeit there are things government can do to help unblock action which will help with those shifts. Yet the short-term press release driven nature of politics is too rarely a good fit for the deeper, harder engagement with the substantive issues or ambitions. Yet in that thought experiment I could feel the pressure towards that endorphin hit of one shiny thing because that felt like what I was ‘supposed’ to come up with – that it wasn’t a serious answer if I didn’t.

In the end I just pretended the world was different and politicians can give those kind of answers. I figured that’s a luxury of not being in that position and if I can’t use that luxury in a no-stakes thought exercise, how can I be surprised that people in those actual positions don’t do that? It felt both like a cop-out given I can imagine the push-back someone in that situation would get, and also like the thing that’s actually needed.

But it was a great reminder of how institutional isomorphism and social norms can help edit out those calls to think differently. It was also useful to reflect on that temptation to try and fix things and assume control of it, rather than saying there are limits to what government can do in terms of shaping attitudes and action.

Everyone thinks everything is worse than it is – a sense that things are getting ever more extreme and polarised. Social media throws our sense of, and crucially MPs, sense of, what people think about issues off. Social media focuses on the extremes, especially now that X has become a site which actively provides a platform for extremist right-wing views. As such, it is reassuring to read examples which show views which are both less extreme and more progressive than it can too often seem.

The Climate Barometer report ‘Signal in the Noise 2025/26‘ showed that the difference between what MPs thought the public believed and what they actually thought is significant. MP’s continue to underestimate how much support there is for renewables amongst the public, including in their own constituencies. Even with the news in the state that it’s in, people still overwhelmingly think climate change is a crucial issue and one that needs to be addressed. They also think it shouldn’t be forgotten in amongst all of the other things going on at the moment.

The disconnect between the perception and reality of public opinion is really important because MP’s will be thinking about how their constituents will react to actions they take. If the image MP’s have in their head is wrong, this can throw them off doing what they might think is the right thing to do. It might persuade them to stay quiet and not push on something, rather than feel like they can put their head above the parapet, let alone that they might be supported by their constituents.

This disconnect can be taken to extremes by some politicians who seem to be very online, and react accordingly. Yet the report is more evidence of the fact that lots of social media increasingly serves to platform the more extreme views, creating a sense that those views are more representative than they are. Climate Barometer looked at discussion about net zero on X and found ‘conversation is dominated by right-leaning skeptics, who make up 86% of all users discussing the term’. This active network of voices against net zero, and other social issues, contrasts with more disparate, less active and co-ordinated voices that are in favour of trying to address environmental issues such as net zero.

This matters even more because of pluralistic ignorance – a phenomenon where people privately disagree with a norm or view but assume others don’t, so they don’t say anything. This helps perpetuate the norm because no-one speaks out, so there’s social conformity to the norm which further reinforces it. If people are given the impression extreme views are the norm, that people are less pro-environmental than they are say, then it has real-world impacts. This can make us feel more weird and isolated from those around us. It also means we’re less likely to raise the subject and put across our views, thereby discovering we’ve got more in common than we had realised. We are also less likely to vote for parties that support those policies because we assume others won’t either so our vote would be ‘wasted’ or take action in some other way.

Creating spaces to have conversations about issues can be a way to try and surface views and get a sense of where people are in practice. It’s why I make a point of talking about how I travel by train, occasionally boat and even more occasionally, by a train on a boat, rather than flying when I go overseas now. For a long time before I started travelling that way I felt bad about flying but I was surrounded by people who were continuing to fly – including those who also worked on environmental issues. The social norm of flying, perhaps with a helping of feeling bad and a shrug of ‘oh well, nothing to be done’ was just so common that it allowed me to convince myself it was ok to fly. If someone had been talking about how fun it is to travel without flying and had helped me to think about travel differently, which is a key part of getting into the zone of it, I would probably have switched to train travel sooner.

As climate and environmental issues become more noticeable, there’s a lot more to discuss about how impacts are arising and what can be done. Even if you don’t use every opportunity that arises, using just a fraction of them to raise in conversation with others would still lead to a lot more discussion on the subject. The chances are they might have more in common with you than you imagine, and if they don’t, at least you know for sure.

Tag: politics

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?