I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t read it for myself. This is an actual study and press release from the University of York. I’m surprised they didn’t issue this press release IN ALL UPPER CASE. Those darn whippersnappers.
New rules of engagement for older people and climate change
A new study by researchers in the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York calls for better engagement of older people on climate change issues.
The report, prepared in partnership with the Community Service Volunteers’ Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme (RSVP), urges the scrapping of stereotypes which suggest that older people are incapable of engagement, passive or disinterested in climate change.
Instead, the research team recommends new approaches to engage older people, which promote direct interaction and the use of trusted agents that are sensitive to the personal circumstances older people face. The report sets out a ten-point plan to engage older people more effectively on climate change issues and greener living.
Recent evidence from the older age sector highlight the inadequacies of current methods of information provision and community engagement on climate change
The report claims that a combination of climate change and an ageing population will have wide ranging socio-economic and environmental impacts. It acknowledges that older people may be physically, financially and emotionally less able to cope with the effects of climate-related weather events.
Lead author Dr Gary Haq, a human ecologist at SEI, said: “The engagement and participation of older people in climate change issues are important as older people can be seen as potential contributors to, and casualties of, climate change as well as potential campaigners to tackle the problem.”
‘Baby boomers’ (aged 50-64) currently have the highest carbon footprint in the UK compared with other age groups. They represent the first generation of the consumer society entering old age. As they will move to older groups they will replace low carbon footprint habits and values with relatively high consumption.
Dr Haq said: “Recent evidence from the older age sector highlight the inadequacies of current methods of information provision and community engagement on climate change. It is critical to implementing policies to tackle climate change and to address the needs of an ageing population.”
Dave Brown, co-author and member of RSVP, said: “While older people are concerned about climate change, they do not feel they will be directly affected. Nor do they feel they can personally take action to stop it. The older generation represent a missing voice and a missed opportunity.”
Notes to editors:
- The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is a global science policy research institute headquartered in Stockholm and with its UK office based in the Environment Department at the University of York. Its mission is to bridge the gap between science and policy to achieve change for a sustainable future.
- More about the University of York’s Environment Department can be found on www.york.ac.uk/environment/
- According to the Government’s Actuary Department, by 2050 people aged over 50 will represent 30 per cent of the UK population compared to 2006.
- SEI’s updated calculations show that baby boomers (aged 50-64) have one of the highest carbon footprints (13.5 tonnes/CO2) in the UK compared other age groups Seniors (aged 65-70) have a carbon footprint of 12. 5 tonnes/CO2 while Elders (aged 70+) have a footprint of equal to the UK average of 12 tonnes.
- As the ‘baby boomers’ move into the older groups they will replace low carbon footprint habits and values with relatively high consumption habits. This “replacement effect” is crucially important and identifies the need for a much clearer targeted effort on climate change and consumption aimed at this demographic group.
- The ten-point plan for engagement of older people in climate change issues:
-
- Abandon old stereotypes
- Get to know your target audience
- Use trusted brands
- Use peer to peer communication
- Use positive messages
- Use the right “frames”
- Show real life examples
- Develop an inclusive dialogue
- Maximise participation
- Ensure the setting is right for change
- The full report can be found on the SEI web site: www.sei-international.org
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“new approaches to engage older people,”
That Swede seems to have trouble with the concept of comparisons. Older than what? The average Swede? Old than the Mean Swede? Older than a Swede born yesterday? And why are these people in York, anyway? Did they get run out of Sweden?
Of course, it probably refers to people who remember a time before Political Correctness and the clear grammar of what they meant to say, which was simply “old people.” And apparently that starts at 50.
I’m going to reach 60 in a couple months – can I become a curmudgeon then? A few people here probably think I am already.
Gary Haq? That doesn’t sound very Swedish. He doesn’t look very Swedish. His bio says:
Oh, I bet he wants me to slow down and drive my age too. And smile at people who want me to drive faster.
Dang, I will have to remember that the next time this social security eligible old coot with two artificial knees climbs up his 2 story ladder to work on his solar power installation. Patronizing bunch of aholes. They couldn’t tell a lepton from a leprechaun or a meson from a mess on. Thank you, but the PhD from MIT in EE for doing vertical temperature profile retrievals of the earth’s atmosphere combined with reading more books in a week than these morons do in a year entitles me to the simple statement: “please take it and rotate it along its axis so that its greatest length is normal to the entrance of your anus and cram it.”
Patronising [snip] – hint – 4 letters, first one is c…
I’m 58 – in case he gives a [snip] – hint -4 letters, first one is s…
And, right now, I’m not far from York…
It’s more like the younger people who want to take other people’s money and control every aspect of their lives have trouble with UNDERSTANDING climate change (aka global warming.
The younger people are unwilling to (or incapable of) understanding that climate is not driven by man’s activities. So, now they want to pretend that climate change is a burden on older people. They should think for a moment about the fact that older people have seen the climate change UP AND DOWN quite a bit during their lives and might know that everything’s a phase (or cycle), just like the stupid developmental phase these younger whiners and bedwetters went through while they were supposedly growing up.
They appear to assume older people are stupid, while the reverse is more likely the case.
This guy misunderstands the nature of energy use and prosperity. Baby Boomers might be the highest users of CO2 at the moment but that’s only because they’re the generation with the most disposable income. I’m younger than the baby boomers but I’ll bet I used more energy as a child and then a teenager and as a young adult than the boomers before me. Similarly, today’s kids and teenagers and young adults use more than I did. As the music goes “the only way is up, baaaby”.
If he wants to cut future CO2 he needs to try and prize all those electronic toys out of the hands of babies. Good luck with that.
It’s probably not a good idea to patronise us babyboomers. We grew up in the shadows of such luminaries as Einstein, Bohr, Turing and von Braun. Engineering and scientific endeavour inspired us; we watched as Sputnik circled the earth followed by Gagarin and others in orbit and then Armstrong and others on the moon. Concorde was an aircraft that brought the outcome of these disciplines together into a thing of beauty. The science supporting those achievements led to today’s computers and electronic systems amongst other developments. And we babyboomers did (and in many cases are still doing) our bit.
However, the least inspirational science today is ‘climate science’, which coincidentally appears to be the least transparent, the least believable and allegedly the most prone to data tampering. Climate scientists do not inspire, they create fear and confusion and cause the scientific community at large to be undeservedly disrespected. From what I have read the scientific method also appears to be surplus to requirements in this particular field.
The babyboomers are probably the last group (as far as the UK is concerned) to have been given a strong and rounded education. We were taught to read (even without pictures), calculate (we’ve probably all heard of and/or suffered from Newton’s fluxions, Napier’s Bones and Fourier and Laplace transforms). But most importantly most of us were taught to reason. Consequently being able to weigh the evidence presented in a debate we can appreciate and even enjoy, a good argument. However we can also smell bovine excreta, bad science and self-delusion from a mile.
So please you scientists of the ‘post modern’ variety keep your global warming propaganda to yourselves and leave the babyboomers to get on with their lives.
Perhaps “community engagement” and “missed opportunities” are buzz words for “financial contribution.” I recommend the social engineering route. Maybe they can commission some Nigerians to encourage contributions to the cause. Just be sure the Nigerians aren’t doing this in Nigeria since it is a violation of section 419 of the Nigerian penal code.
From what I’ve read, radical environmentalists have encouraged the aged to kill themselves to save the planet. Since the eco-fascists haven’t had enough luck with that, I guess now they’re trying to propagandize the elderly.
I bet this doesn’t have anything what so ever with the fact that the majority of the wealth, and “oddly” enough the wealthy people, are retarde, err retired.
Equal that importance to the fact that the old farts who went lazy, err retired folks, are like a third of the amount of voters. So I bet they’re’n’t an important group at all, wink wink nudge nudge.
And people wonder why the consumption of alcohol has gone way up? People living at 95 still driving cars like there’s no tomorrow, just like the evil young spawns who think they can outrun me! Uhm, right, where was I. Haven’t they seen old folks drink? Or do they just not remember it the day after? :p
Yeah, and I forgot that my wife who is older than I am still works at MIT processing Voyager data along with data from some of the other things we have out there. There is one professor that “retired” years ago, but still shows up to teach a class pro bono and engage in research. Maybe its time for the codgers to teach the young squirts that they don’t know very much when it comes to anything. My name is from Middle Egyptian. I decided to teach myself to read it when about 60. I would have to refresh a bit, but I did get to the point where I could read “The Book of the Dead” in its original form. [Its actually really called the book of going out by day. The most famous one is the papyrus of Ani.]
Funny, every generation thinks they are smarter than….
and every older generation has been there, done it to death, and got the T-shirt….
Does anything really change?
“The engagement and participation of older people in climate change issues are important… as potential campaigners to tackle the problem.”
Or perhaps if they actually listen to older people they will find that there have always been colder, hotter, wetter, dryer years and decades and that there is nothing unusual going on today.
Dusty, well said.
Dr. Haq talks about us old codgers not getting enough information, but what he is really referring to is propaganda. What truly frosts me is his arrogance. We old-timers have been around long enough to experience the cyclical nature of climate.
How condescending! If you happen to be a skeptic, then you must be an older person or has the same backward mindset and need to be re-educated.
The premise of going after the baby boomers and i am one, Is that the boomers vote as most of the younger generation do not. That is what i take from this! It makes sense if you think about it.Thier message has mainly been to the young and where it once worked they have found it lacking in coming through for them[the warmist]. So going after the ones who do most of the voting is the logical thing to do. But as most on this thread have said they ars under estimating the boomers!!
George E. Smith says: “I’m not a biologist; but I have watched those wildlife movies where a younger, up and coming male lion, comes into a pride of lions, and challenges the worn out old geezer, and either kills him, or drives him off to perhaps an even worse fate. All the lionesses in the pride, of course have no interest in romance, since they all have young cubs to raise.”
An amazing story from when I was a young adult in California, was Frasier the Lion. He was an elderly, nearly toothless male lion, who had been purchased by the Lion Country Safari in Irvine in February of 1971. They were simply giving him a place to die. His tongue dangled out one side of his mouth, and he had trouble walking. A special vitamin mixture was used to dose him.
However, there seemed to be something special about Frasier. Something that only the female lionesses seemed to sense. The employees started noticing that two lionesses would always be there when Frasier wanted to walk around, one on each side to steady him. Then they noticed that, when the young male lions didn’t like Frasier hanging around with the lionesses, that the lionesses were the ones chasing off the young male lions. Furthermore, Frasier appeared to have enough energy to start mating with the lionesses, and before his death in June of 1972, he had sired 35 cubs.
Older men in Southern California started asking Lion Country what sort of vitamin mixture they were giving Frasier. I never found out if that information was available.
This “survival of the fittest” is just hogwash. It is “survival of the luckiest”. Most of us baby-boomers are not here because we were the best. We just happened to not get killed when we went through our motorcycle phase, or we inherited the right genetics to not have a heart attack yet, or a stroke. Most of us are not physically fit, we don’t eat according to some stupid pyramid, and we have bad habits. Playing World of Warcraft all night isn’t a good idea, but many of us do that, too.
We have gone through decades of “the end is near”, with a new apocalypse-of-the-month trying to frighten us. We don’t frighten easily, anymore. We don’t suffer fools gladly. And some of us invented the computers that these youngsters are playing their climate games on. We know what computers are good for (mostly playing video games, doing taxes, and sending email to grandkids), and they are NOT good for predicting the future.
Being one of the very oldest boomers (born Jan 1, 1946), I take this rather personally. Somebody needs a good a$$ whooping. I didn’t bust my butt all my life earning a living and paying rediculous tax rates so some central planning bureacrat could educate me on how I’d spend my retirement years. Damn right I’m going to have a big carbon foot print! It says “Harley-Davidson” on the tank. Get over it!
Recommended reading for Dr Gary Haq: –
How to Win Friends and Influence People
This is Dale Carnegie’s summary of his book, from 1936
Part One
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Yo dude, 3 strikes! You’re out!
And that’s just part one!
http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html
His CV –
“Biography
Dr Gary Haq is a Research Associate at SEI York where he undertakes research on ethical living, behavioural change and urban environment issues.
Gary has worked with the media to engage the public in discussion and debate of climate change issues and ethical living. He is involved in exploring different methods of communicating green issues and fostering attitudinal and behavioural change, especially with regard to personal travel.
Career
He holds a Diploma in Economics, a PhD in Transport and Environment, an MSc in Environmental Impact Assessment and a BSc (Hons) in Human Ecology.”
What a crock of green diarrhoea!
Well – he’s certainly “empowered” this (68yr) old codger.
After struggling with driving vision, I’ve just had two successful cataract ops and I’m celebrating by cashing in some investments and choosing a new car.
Got all the brochures spread out tonight – ranging from sensible Toyota Pious to meatier fare.
Dr Gary ” ethical living” Haq has just clinched it for me –
It’s got to be the Porsche Cayenne Turbo!
When you get older, and have actually experienced 50 years of weather, you have experienced three overlapping 30 year climate averages.
These people make traction with young people that do not have a personal history or an understanding of recorded history, but with us older folks the line ‘it has never happened before’ or ‘it was xxx in the past’, just does not cut it.
They may control the present, but they don’t control my past or the history I understand.
It has all happened before, and will all happen again, with or without people.
Foxgoose – Dodge Challenger SRT.
grayman says:
August 26, 2010 at 11:38 am
=================
grayman, as you pointed out, they are in a catch 22 with this.
Young kids believe it, but they don’t vote.
Older people don’t believe it, but do vote.
And by the time those young kids get around to voting, they are older, have seen it not “proven” for decades, gotten wise to all the lies, and they don’t believe it any more…
Its simply called experience, older folks have had a chance to deal with car salesmen etc etc and ask questions…fool me once, fool me twice sort of thing..
*shakes cane at all the youngin’ whippersnapper researchers*
You wet-behind-the-ears chitlins couldn’t see the forest for the trees if a bristlecone pine branch jumped up and slapped you in the side of the head !