Description
Large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system is increasingly present in discussions about responses to climate change. Youth tend to be under-represented in these discussions despite the intergenerational consequences of policy. We report on two experiments in public dialogue (DICEY: Dialogues in Climate Engineering with Youth). The first, a novel approach to science communication through co-authorship of a youth guide and policy brief (concluded); and the second, an experimental approach to public dialogue on climate interventions, focusing on question creation with youth, scientists, policy-makers and artists (forthcoming).The dominant approach to communication on climate interventions has been to ask participants (typically, adults) to appraise different proposals, often involving researchers ‘close to the science’. This is problematic for new technologies because public awareness tends to be low (Scheer & Renn, 2014), so there has been a move towards deliberative approaches. Challenges associated with these approaches include deferral to scientific authority, even on non-scientific questions, and problematic framings (Corner & Pidgeon, 2015) and recent developments have been to reduce the role of scientists and use more tentative language (Bellamy et al., 2014).
DICEY involves scientists and policy-makers in a different capacity - as accountable to youth questions and concerns - through public switching. The ‘public’ in public engagement is flipped to make scientists and policy-makers the ‘public’ who engage with youth questions on climate interventions ‘downstream’ of youth dialogues. We will share learning from these experiments to argue that common ground can be created between youth, scientists and policy-makers through question-creation and public-switching. Dialogue produces questions rather than positions to encourage understanding and constructive disagreement (and reasons for it) rather than entrench existing perspectives.These models offer potential for use by science communicators at early stages of technoscientific innovations. We will engage the audience by modelling some interactive approaches used during youth workshops.
| Period | 12 Apr 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Public Communication of Science and Technology |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | NetherlandsShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |