In an interview with broadcaster and environmental campaigner Chris Packham, many themes emerged about the lack of progress in combating climate change and biodiversity loss. One stood out; most MPs ignore science. How can environmental campaigners change the situation?
The interview, A War on Climate Change: Are Environmental Activists Losing The Fight? with Amol Rajan, covered many topics: the scale of the problem, little political action, the lack of success of net zero policies, and so on. All the topics depend on science to analyse them and develop solutions. But science gets a mixed reception: it can solve immediate problems such as health but is viewed with scepticism when it threatens livelihoods. How we live is driving climate change and biodiversity loss; therefore, science is the key tool in guiding us forward.
Managing the change in how we live boils down to the ‘rule of thirds’: One third of the people understand why change is needed and therefore get behind it, one third are unsure and need persuading and supporting, and the final third will never agree with the need to change and therefore will resist it. A fundamental problem is that a large part of the UK population doesn’t have a strong enough background in science to understand why change is needed. Around 1 in 8 1 of the population have a background in STEM subjects, but for those with a clear understanding of climate science, the situation will be worse. The situation is not better with MPs, where the best estimate is that roughly 15–17% of them have a STEM-related background. Against this background we shouldn’t be surprised that changes in the way we live to mitigate climate change are slow and, in some cases, stopped.
Environmental campaigners need to do two things. First, make science more accessible to as many people as possible and show how to use it to take positive action in everyday life. It is a similar approach with MPs. With a better use of science, then new policies can be introduced that will improve the situation and remove fear about the change that will happen in people’s lives. Secondly, following the ‘rule of thirds’, using the first third of the people who have already accepted change is required to help convince the middle third who are unsure. The build-up of momentum in opinion will hopefully start to chip away at the resistance of the final third. Only then will we see a significant improvement in our impact on the environment.
Until science takes a more prominent role in the action we all take, we will be stumbling towards a very difficult future. When the next environmental campaign comes through the socials, ask what science it is based on - if it is more wishful thinking, then move onto some activity that is centred on science.
1. There is no estimate for the number of people in the UK that have enough background to understand the importance of climate science. Therefore, to get an estimate, I used STEM-related jobs, which is roughly 9.4 million of the working population. For the number of the retired population with STEM-related backgrounds, I assumed half of the 55+ group, which could be of the order of 1 million or more. I also included A-level students, who should be able to understand the basics of climate science, which was about 313,000 students in 2025. Adding all of the crude estimates together gives an estimate of 1 in 8 people, but I suspect that the ratio is much worse.