Discourses of climate inaction undermine public support for 1.5 °C lifestyles
通过英国公众愿景工作坊发现，尽管公众原则上支持低碳生活方式，但四种气候不作为叙事（如拒绝个人责任、否认紧迫性）构成拖延话语，削弱了行动意愿，需加以应对。
• We conducted unique public visioning workshops on radical low-carbon lifestyles. • We found strong public support for many low-carbon lifestyle strategies and futures. • Narratives of inaction create a public discourse of delay, undermining this support. • Narratives of inaction held emotional resonances that evoked defensive responses. • Countering this public discourse of delay is essential for meaningful climate action. Urgent action to tackle the climate crisis will only be possible with significant public support for radical lifestyle change. Arguments that seek to delay climate action and justify inadequate mitigation efforts, often termed ‘discourses of delay’, are widespread within political and media debate on climate change. Here we report the results of novel public deliberation and visioning workshops, conducted across the UK in 2020/2021 to explore visions of a 1.5 °C future. We found that despite very strong public support for many low-carbon lifestyle strategies in principle, entrenched discourses of delay are limiting beliefs that a fair, low-carbon future is possible. Consisting of four overarching narratives of climate inaction (Resisting personal responsibility; Rejecting the need for urgency; Believing change is impossible; and Defending the social contract), this public discourse of delay is characterised by three distinct repertoires (each with its own emotional resonance), that act to weaken support for climate action by producing defensive responses to discussions of low-carbon lifestyle change and undermining public sense of agency. We argue that countering these narratives, and the defensive responses they invoke, is essential for achieving meaningful public action on climate change.