Ep. 20
“That’s the real key with climate communication: what you can do about it.”
An Aussie Academic’s Perspective on Climate Communications Reveals The Power of Optimism. Today I am joined by a kindred spirit in developing applicable climate solutions. Nicole Cocolas is a scholar of climate change by way of researching tourism and consumer attitudes and behaviors within the industry. A Lecturer in Transport Management at the University of Surrey. She is Australian-born, currently based in San Francisco where we met, and soon to be moving to the UK to work as a lecturer in Transport Management. As a world traveler, she has now dedicated her life to helping others travel responsibly and sustainably. We discuss how Nicole first came to the US by “winning the lottery”, her continuous and impactful research on consumer behavior in tourism, the relationship between air travel and climate change, how she sees the aviation industry’s role, thoughts on climate calculators, the importance of carbon removal, and more. Nicole’s research has shown that people often have binary extremes to travel attitudes, and she hopes through climate communication we can empower consumers on what they can do as opposed to guilting them into what is going wrong.