So pronounced Michael O’Leary, the often controversial and always outspoken boss of Ryanair, while being interviewed on Ireland’s RTE Radio One’s Countryside earlier this month.
“This nonsense that we’ll have to cut back on beef consumption or all become vegans or all start riding bicycles is not the way forward,” he ranted on.
And he kept it coming: “There is always some lunatic out there who points to a load of rubbish science; science changes.”
Ouch almighty.
Here are a couple of reports of the interview:
http://www.thejournal.ie/michael-oleary-climate-change-3330599-Apr2017/
While he accepts the climate changes – he cites global temperature fluctuations of the past – he does not believe it is linked to carbon consumption.
It wasn’t O’Leary’s first time lambasting the climate changers either.
Here he is in Britain’s Independent in 2010 in both-barrel expletive mode: “Nobody can argue that there isn’t climate change. The climate’s been changing since time immemorial,” he said.
“Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit.”
Scientists – in it for the money – he says, “argue there is global warming because they wouldn’t get half of the funding they get now if it turns out to be completely bogus.
“The scientific community has nearly always been wrong in history anyway. In the Middle Ages, they were going to excommunicate Galileo because the entire scientific community said the Earth was flat… I mean, it is absolutely bizarre that the people who can’t tell us what the fucking weather is next Tuesday can predict with absolute precision what the fucking global temperatures will be in 100 years’ time. It’s horseshit.”
There is more here, and thankfully a measured, clarifying, swear-free, riposte from Dr Emily Shuckburgh: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-it-doesnt-exist-says-ryanair-boss-oleary-2075420.html
The latest O’Leary outburst earlier this month caused an outpouring of responses on my Cambridge cohort’s WhatsApp group.
As students of sustainability leadership, how do we respond to such strident and challenging views? O’Leary happens to be the boss of Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, and farms Angus cattle, so one could reasonably presume he has a credible knowledge of green house gas emissions. But should we even pay him any attention at all, given his street-fighter, slanging-match debating style? Or should we engage, and try to reason?
It’s tempting to ignore O’Leary and those we know like him as misguided and beyond redemption. It would be easier that way.
But I think trying to engage might – but only might – lead to a more positive outcome. If we don’t, it definitely won’t. So I reckon it’s worth a go.
But how? First, we sustainability types should get our facts sorted, that’ll show ‘em.
Well, maybe not quite.
I came across a reference to an interesting paper the other day, which was cited in a strategic action plan written by a student who went before us. It’s titled: “Talking Past Each Other? Cultural Framing of Sceptical and Convinced Logics in the Climate Change Debate.” It’s by Andrew J Hoffman, of the University of Michigan.
Climate change, he says, is as much a cultural debate as a scientific one. Although it’s reached a scientific consensus, it has yet to achieve a cultural societal consensus.
Therefore, dealing in facts alone won’t do. Depending on who we are, our values and belief systems, shapes how we see the world… and whether we ‘believe’ facts or not. This is our “institutional logic” as social scientists call it. And these logics also impact our linguistics. Do we see the abortion debate as about ‘life’ or ‘choice’? Was Brexit about ‘a Europe of opportunity’ or ‘taking back control’? Was Trump about ‘making America great again’ or political competence and trust?
Hoffman argues that there are five groups of people in the climate change debate: the Believers, the Convinced, Neutrals, the Sceptics and the Deniers. The Believers and Deniers are in respective professional camps – the IPCC and bulk of scientists report climate change consensus, and professional lobbyists such as the Heartland Institute https://www.heartland.org/index.html seek to cast doubt on it.
The ‘convinced’ and ‘sceptics’ – and some ‘neutrals’ are the rest of us. And because of our cultural values systems, we take a view: ‘climate change is real – just look at the facts and what the experts tell us.’ Or ‘climate change – it’s just another way for the government to reduce our freedom’.
We see something similar from Mr O’Leary: scientists are in it for the money, their inability to forecast weather, and so on.
We are failing to listen to each other’s language, says Hoffman. We talk past each other. This is a logic schism, as he calls it, and the two sides often resort to demonising each other in consequence.
So, how do we bridge the gap?
Hoffman suggests, as an academic might, that more research is needed – into opposing climate views. It’s folly only to research those who already agree and want to do something to sort it, he asserts.
Second, he says there is a need for an “integrative shift”. Move the discussion away from whether climate change is or is not happening to areas where common ground can be found, such as: the validity of the scientific process, or even more easily grappled with, risks associated with action or inaction in dealing with climate change, or the economic impacts of action or inaction… and even to the ideological issues that surface around the debate, such as the role of personal freedom, or of governments. These are potential ‘broker’ issues, he says.
Third, he suggests, individuals from both institutional logics who believe the opposite of their value norms could champion the opposing view, and be ‘climate brokers’. People of the same values are more likely to listen to one of their own, even when they hold a different view, than someone from the opposing camp.
In conclusion, it looks like science alone won’t have the last word. Culture needs to catch up. And Hoffman calls on social scientists to help us frame the debate.
What about Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary? All we have to do is speak the same language, understand each other’s logic, right?
Well, good luck with that. For a man who runs a huge airline, which takes millions of people on holiday ever year, he openly lambasts holidays as a complete waste of time. No, I’m not making it up. See: http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/michael-oleary-holidays-complete-waste-time/article/1150317
Is there’s any reasoning with the man? Maybe. But quite possibly not.
Sustainability Education 
STEVEN….
Thanks for this interesting blog.
Let me be clear before going any further, no matter what we think about this guy, to be honest, I DO HOPE HE IS CORRECT! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if climate change were a bunch of rubbish?! We could divert our sustainability attentions to other pressing world problems, and there would be so much more hope for this planet.
Since climate change can affect (and DOES seem to be affecting) so much of the other issues of sustainable development and progress towards them, it’s a no-brainer to me that this is the number one issue of our time, and it is the current living generations that are required to do something about it. I simply go to the 17 SDGs and look at #13 – Climate Action and ask myself, if #13 isn’t tackled can we meaningfully make any long-term progress against the other SDGs if we’re all going to fry???
Perhaps there is some hope. Our group paper is looking at how companies are aligning their strategy and targets to the SDGs, and lo and behold, of all the companies we have interviewed for our paper’s data, most have included #13 as a focus area / are of organisational materiality. This gives me some insight and hope that perhaps the business world is aware of this problem and is consciously trying to address it.
Your comments about the ‘five groups of people in the climate change debate: the Believers, the Convinced, Neutrals, the Sceptics and the Deniers,’ rang a bell with me, and the Communication lecture we had regarding the Settlers, Prospectors, and Pioneers we learned about. Perhaps we could put these into a table or matrix to see who fits where, and then determine the communication strategies necessary to receive their buy-in for effective climate action.
Add to this pot the two papers on communication we discussed in our outside session with Louise, and I think we might be able to come up with some concrete, founded-in-academic-based-facts, strategies for messaging and massaging the message effectively. I am not an expert in this topic, but it seems logical to me: the groups involved in the climate change debate, identified / plotted into which ‘primary orientation’ group they fit, and then how to communicate the message short- and long-term based on those two academic papers, and I think we have a logic here!
Now, getting back to O’Leary (Ohhhhh – leery!!!)… I think it would be interesting to have him come to CISL. We have nothing to lose but our virginity (that is not a Richard Branson pun!!) with a guy like him, and it would at least give us some audio and visual practice in engaging with someone from that side of the aisle. I don’t know how it can be arranged, but it would be more beneficial than harmful for us I think, even though I have seen and experienced many of his type before: the self-centered, know-it-all who can be that way because for some reason (either luck or skill or both) he has his ‘fuck you’ money .
Tally ho!
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Interesting piece and it relates to sustainability communications. I wonder if Michael does this for effect knowing there’s a receptive media who’ll print anything he says, if he has an alter-ego like Larry David who acts on his impulses, or if he really and truly holds these views.
When I read the headlines, and engaged on WhatsApp with my classmates, I felt that this was a live example to put our theory into effect. What if? we could turn some-one like this and create a snowball effect? My gut reaction on twitter was disdain and anger and I responded in the moment with some wise-words spoken by Cicero. That made me feel good for a nano-second. But I hadn’t changed anything, except maybe show-off that I knew of an ancient Roman scholar who no doubt specialised in witty ripostes. So I thought about it for the day and decided to write Michael a letter. Just one page, a request to have a conversation, as I’m genuinely interested in his point of view and to learn about his communication style and where if comes from.
I went through a process of putting myself in his shoes, and why it would be comforting to hold the view that global warming caused by carbon emissions by humans was all rubbish. We all tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world, and we are the heroes in our own tales, fighting against something. So what was his story? Then, as I’m reading George Lakoff’s excellent book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” it occurred to me that this is an issue of framing. There are ample scientific facts to prove that global warming is a fact and that it directly correlates with the increase of carbon in our atmosphere that directly correlates with the burning of fossil fuels by humans in the modern Industrial Age. The science is sound. There are no new peer reviewed papers that dispute this fact. You have to go back to the early 90s when data still had to come in and when climate models were in their infancy to find a modicum of agnosticism of this issue. So whats the problem? How is the message not getting through? He’s a smart guy and he’s not alone.
So I went deeper and asked if he has the motivation to learn? or the time of interest to really research this issue? whats in it for him? and who in Ryanair is going to print of IPCC AR5 The Scientific Case and put the facts on his desk? Maybe he doesn’t know and instead watched a conspiracy documentary on the telly where a handful of researchers complained about not getting funding for their alternative views. From reading Lakoff I agree with his assessment of progressives using “weasel words” to state their case, whereas conservatives are more strident in their views and unapologetic in their choice of words. We have a real problem communicating sustainability and the complexity of global warming, that this is a systemic problem and not linear, and that it takes time to see the effects. There is a gap between science and business and the public at large who speak different languages.
So in conclusion, how can we reframe this issue and win the debate. The scientific questions have been settled. Now its time to get the facts out there, using communication models that work and not being afraid to use strident language and frame this as a moral issue. How can the burning of fossil fuels become a health issue? what can we learn from how smoking and cancer became inextricably linked? where producers were held to account. I don’t have the answers but I hope he takes up my offer of a friendly chat over a cup of coffee (made from sustainably sourced beans of course!).
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This guy has truly touched a nerve for you and others as well. His ignorance in denying causation is not unique to him. Unfortunately, there is more of it around than we would expect. It is even more bothersome when successful people take positions that just seem to be too ignorant to come from such high achievers. Our expectations that success in business and rational thought go hand-in-hand is part of the problem. We expect too much.
You mentioned the “Deniers”. I suggest we put aside engaging them for the time being. There is so much more low hanging fruit, that you need not waste your energy on them. Skeptics can be convinced otherwise, and the neutrals just need more information, but deniers have dug in deep on their position. They have disregarded evidence. They have taken an absurd position. Rarely will any amount of logic pull them out of their holes. It is only when they find themselves completely alone, without skeptics or neutrals to look to, that deniers will quietly abandon their positions.
I do not believe it is the deniers that are holding back action on climate change. While some may hold influential positions, I believe the real problem is that too much of the population is still neutral or skeptic.
Bring them over and then you will have real action.
I know you wanted to bring this guy or other deniers in and hear what the other side says. If this were some other topic of debate, then I would agree. But for climate change deniers, I don’t think it serves any purpose just yet. I do not believe this is about failure to communicate. They do not wish to communicate or even argue in the ordinary sense. Most spout the same gibberish. There is no point in engaging deniers until the skeptics and neutrals have all come on board, and we have run out of people who will at least be reasonable and open about discussion.
There are people who believe the Earth is flat, people who believe the Moon landing was a hoax, people who believe Elvis is still alive, and people who do not believe in climate change. I put them all in the same bucket. They do not wish to accept truth, do not want to be confronted with facts, and they harden their resolve with each exchange. Let’s put our time and energy where we can make a difference and cause real change.
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