Weather watching: when will the message get through?

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/jan/15/extreme-weather-natural-disasters-psychology

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As an undergraduate living in a rundown part of Liverpool in the 1970s, I witnessed a fire in an abandoned workshop which my flat overlooked. I stood transfixed. Even at the time I remember thinking about my actions, or rather inactions. I was mesmerised by this elemental force. In a grey, rundown and defeated urban landscape, it was colourful, full of energy and spirit; it seemed to be an invincible force, a symbol of resistance.

Several years later I was driving through a village in Cornwall and passed a small cottage on fire. The local inhabitants were gathered around. This was a different experience for the villagers, but they were no less transfixed. They were standing next to a building that was part of their familiar everyday scene, but now they were seeing it in a new light.

I have been an environmental psychologist for more than 30 years, during which time my research has focused on public perceptions of risk and risk communication across a variety of environmental issues, as well as how we can tackle the causes and consequences of climate change at an individual and collective level.

Experiencing the environmental problems I write about can be a salutary experience. We know from years of research that having timely, relevant and practical information is not only important for effective action in risk situations, but that the absence of this information only adds to stress and anxiety. This was brought home to me in recent weeks when my house was surrounded with water on all four sides on Christmas Eve.

But we also know that information may be a necessary, but insufficient, condition to change people's behaviour. This is evident from government safe driving, smoking, and dietary programmes, and campaigns to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. I have been struck by images of people taking photographs of the massive waves that have been rolling in from the Atlantic – a number of wave watchers have been swept out to sea. Why is it that people ignore advice even when to do so puts their own and others' lives at risk?

Mesmerised by destruction

On 11 May 1985, television cameras were at Valley Parade to record what should have been a celebratory last football match of the season; Bradford City had won promotion. The date is memorable because a serious fire broke out at Bradford's ground, killing 56 spectators and injuring at least 265.

I was involved in the research project which gathered evidence for the subsequent inquiry into crowd safety and control at sports grounds. The television footage provided researchers with detailed documentary evidence of the sequence of events. This film evidence was crucial for two reasons: firstly, it recorded how people actually responded to the rapidly escalating situation, rather than forcing us to rely on what people said they did or chose to remember.

Secondly, the TV cameras recorded what seemed to be the almost unremarkable actions of spectators; so many people, having escaped from the burning stand by clambering down onto the pitch, ran some 30 yards, stopped, turned and just stared. They didn't keep running despite the incredible heat; they stopped, mesmerised. The fire only took a matter of minutes to make its way from one end of the stand to the other. Some of those badly injured, and filmed tumbling onto the pitch on fire, had clearly stopped to watch the flames.

When these disasters come, whether they are fires in buildings or natural disasters such as storms and floods, we are usually unprepared both physically and psychologically. Our first response to climatic problems often focuses on the inconvenience – can't get to work, can't go shopping, holiday flights delayed. We assume that the trains will run, the planes will fly, the ferries will sail, the electricity supply will continue, the pub will be open and our expensive Gore-Tex anoraks will keep us dry as we walk there. We have become technology dependent.

And then we blame others – especially government. After all, what is government for but to protect us? Don't hold your breath. Owen Paterson, UK secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, recently announced that there will be 1700 job cuts in the Environment Agency. He assures us that this will have no demonstrable impact on the service because in times of austerity the government is concerned to ensure that money goes on front-line services.

But those who answer the phones at the Environment Agency are as much a front-line service as those who collect data and model river flows. Getting the right information in a timely manner may make the difference between life and death. However, people will still make decisions, even risky decisions, in response to a wide range of signals, sources and messages.

Our forebears were used to being close up to nature.Their normal everyday experience of living and working was being exposed to the elements, not sitting in offices. The majority of us no longer get cold like they used to, or wet like they used to. Even when we do experience nature at its harshest – on television – most of us are comfortably cocooned. It's only when the level of protection to which we have become accustomed breaks downthat we realise our vulnerability.

Of course, for two-thirds of the world's population nature is still a daily reality. But those in the global north especially have become alienated from it. There has been a metabolic rift, as Marx foretold, a rupture in the relationship between nature and humanity emanating from capitalist production and the growing division between town and country. Marx warned that nature was not something to be used up, but rather to be passed on to subsequent generations in the same or a better condition, not damaged as we seem intent on doing.

Climate change will surely have the effect of reeducating all of us, and reintroducing us to elemental forces. When we lie in bed listening to the storm-force gales – or venture to the seafront to photograph them – we should not just hear the wind, but hear the message too.

David Uzzell is professor of environmental psychology at the University of Surrey – follow him on Twitter @daviduzzell

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