Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience

One of the reasons that people may not take action to mitigate climate change is that they lack first-hand experience of its potential consequences. From this perspective, individuals who have direct experience of phenomena that may be linked to climate change would be more likely to be concerned by the issue and thus more inclined to undertake sustainable be- haviours. So far, the evidence available to test this hypothesis is limited, and in part contradictory1–4. Here we use national survey data collected from 1,822 individuals across the UK in 2010, to examine the links between direct flooding experience, perceptions of climate change and preparedness to reduce energy use. We show that those who report experience of flooding express more concern over climate change, see it as less uncertain and feel more confident that their actions will have an effect on climate change. Importantly, these perceptual differences also translate into a greater willingness to save energy to mitigate climate change. Highlighting links between local weather events and climate change is therefore likely to be a useful strategy for increasing concern and action

Resistant legacies

This paper addresses the dialectic between mega events (MEs) and the city, and especially the frictions generated by their encounter, which the current wave of protest and resistance to MEs provides with both a significant expression as well as a locus for conceptual and empirical exploration. First, I introduce the argument by looking at the spatiality of neoliberal capitalism through the abstract form of the urban it presupposes and the concrete affective, material and atmospheric assemblages through which it is actualized in the contemporary city – a process, I argue, which is always problematized by frictions, conflicts and contradictions. Second, I situate this discussion vis-à-vis what Jacob (2013) terms the eventification of urban space and particularly the peculiar contradiction it expresses: namely, that urban space increasingly becomes the locus of both the production and prevention of events – a contradiction whose effects can be most cogently observed in the current erosion of the right to protest in the contemporary city. Third, I introduce the ME as the site in which this dialectic and its contradictions are most forcefully expressed. MEs are the quintessential urban event, at the same time an intense generation of urban ‘effervescence’ (Durkheim, Emile. 2008. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford University Press), and an apparatus aimed at channelling such effervescence into safe and capitalizable expressions. However, this process of ‘controlled decontrolling’ [Elias and Dunning. 1971. ‘Leisure in the Sparetime Spectrum’. In Sociology of Sport, edited by R. Albonic and K. Pfister-Binz. Birkhäuser] is always disjointed by the urban contingency in which it takes place, unintentionally producing frictions that are fraught with political potential. If the notion of legacy, as I suggest, is what cements the late interspersion between MEs and capitalist urbanization, then deconstructing legacy could provide a fresh perspective to explore the relation among MEs, urban space and resistance. Therefore, fourth, I introduce the concept of ‘resistant legacies’, whereby I propose to address conceptually and empirically the frictions produced by MEs and the impact and legacy they may leave on the social, affective and normative fabric of the city, by suggesting the current wave of ME protests as a promising site for this exploration. Finally, I conclude with some methodological suggestions for future research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio