C-PREE Seminar with Max Boykoff: “Creative (Climate) Communications: Productive Pathways for Science, Policy and Society”

Date & Time Apr 15 2019 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Speaker(s)
Maxwell Boykoff, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy, University of Colorado Boulder
Audience Open to the Public, Registration Required
At C-PREE's David Bradford Energy and Environmental Seminar Series, scholars from various fields, mostly from outside of the University, present recent work or lead a discussion about a C-PREE-related topic. Attendance by Princeton students, faculty and staff is encouraged.
 
All seminars are open to the public on a limited basis with approved RSVP to ccrosby@princeton.edu
 
Lecture Description:
Conversations about climate change at the science-policy interface and in our lives have been stuck. In this presentation I highlight some dimensions of my 2019 book Creative (Climate) Communications that integrates lessons from the social sciences and humanities to more effectively make connections through issues, people, and things that everyday citizens care about. This has worked to enhance our understanding that there is no ‘silver bullet’ to communications about climate change. It argues that a ‘silver buckshot’ approach is needed instead, where strategies effectively reach different audiences in different contexts. Tactics emanating from this approach can then significantly improve efforts that seek meaningful, substantive, and sustained responses to contemporary climate challenges. I argue that it can also help to effectively re-capture a common or middle ground on climate change in the public arena. The book documents, analyzes and evaluates endeavors that harness creativity to try to better understand what kinds of communications work where, when, why, and under what conditions in the twenty-first century.