Climate Communication: A Literal Hot Mess
The world is heating up, and more often than not, so are conversations about climate. Saving our planet is in everyone’s best interest, so why is this topic so hard to talk about?
Despite clear agreement about the topic within the scientific community, climate change remains a controversial subject in many circles. The broader US public’s perception and understanding of climate change complicate the adoption of US climate policy as we seek to meet targets to limit catastrophic warming. Let’s dive into what exactly hinders effective communication of both the scope of the problem and the potential policy responses.
The Challenges
Politics Makes Things Complicated
The political partisan divide in the US poses a significant barrier to getting the public to believe climate scientists.
This polarization surrounding the truth of climate change has steadily increased since the 1990s.² By one metric, 59% of voters believe that truth that climate change is anthropogenic (caused by humans).⁷ However, when that data is further broken down, a clear split emerges. In one poll, 95% of Democrats believe that climate change is occurring while only 41% of Republicans do.⁷ Furthermore, just 25% of those Republicans believe it is anthropogenic.⁷ Despite increasingly intense natural disasters and the overwhelming scientific consensus that agrees on climate change’s causes and impact, the overall proportion of Americans “very concerned” about climate change has remained below 50% in recent years.
An Inherently Complex Problem
The complexity of the challenge also poses a significant obstacle to successful communication.
Both the causes and the impacts of climate change are diverse and multifactorial.² Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, notes that unlike “old” environmental problems such as river pollution, “it is hard to see the connections between coal plants in one part of the world and hurricanes in another.”² This can be seen in polling going back decades, in which people were mainly concerned about “visible” environmental problems rather than more “obscure” ones like climate change.²
Adding to this complexity is the fact that climate change is inherently a global challenge; emissions across the world impact the US with the same magnitude as our own (and visa versa).² As Kamarck states, “everyone is accountable, and therefore, no one is accountable.” This unclear jurisdiction (who emits the physical greenhouse gas) and accountability (who should be held responsible) is even visible in the Paris Climate Agreement, which encourages emissions tracking and reduction pledges, but doesn’t impose a legal threat to countries that don’t reduce their emissions.² Whether on the global or the individual scale, this weak link between emissions and an associated responsible party allows people to more easily, incorrectly believe that “it wasn’t the fossil fuels at all, just the weather pattern or an act of God.”²
Popular entertainment doesn’t help with these challenges as Amitav Ghosh, an Indian climate novelist, points out.² The lack of discussion of climate change’s impacts in popular literature, coupled with its often fantastical depiction in visual media, only exacerbates the difficulty the general public faces when trying to ground their understanding of the crisis’s impact on their lives. For example, people often cite The Day After Tomorrow’s 300-foot wave that engulfs Manhattan as an example of why one centimeter of sea-level rise shouldn’t be a big deal. Additionally, movies often depict massive disasters, similar to those worsened by climate change, but attribute them to fictitious causes, further convoluting this issue.¹⁰
Mistrust in Government
Given that combatting climate change on any meaningful scale requires some form of collective action, governments emerge as natural leaders.
However, in the US, the public’s trust in the federal government is near historic lows, hovering near 20%, as measured by a poll asking participants if they “trust the government in Washington [to] always or most of the time [do what is right].”² Not only does this limit the make-up of a democratic government to being split and partially filled with climate change deniers, but it also means that large portions of the population are unlikely to trust those in power who propose action on this critical issue.²
The Emotional Side
However, beyond these systemic challenges, it is important to note that individual values and beliefs play a role in our conversations about climate change. How can we approach this sensitive subject in a way that doesn’t feel like an attack on people’s emotions?
From the perspective of a skeptic, the information and confidence displayed by expert scientists can come across as patronizing, immediately establishing a perceived ill-will toward the person and mistrust of the information.³ However, as Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School, notes, this is not because “people are simply too irrational to recognize the implications of climate-change science.”³ Rather, based on differing individual values and the vastly different media ecosystems that those values promote, “citizens are culturally polarized [on this issue because they are] too rational.”³
This boils down to a personal calculation, weighing the impacts of being correct about climate change versus disagreeing with their cultural group.³ In general, “being right or wrong” about the science has little meaningful impact on a person’s life.³ However, as Kahan notes, “the impact of taking a position that conflicts with their cultural group could be disastrous,” ranging from being labeled as stupid, corrupted, weird, or obnoxious.³ This challenge is made worse by polarized media environments that, via subtext, effectively make the claims that “if you are one of us, you agree.”³
Conclusion
It is clear that both climate science and policy are complicated by a multitude of overlapping and interwoven challenges. However, the critical timeline presented by the crisis necessitates we actively work to overcome those barriers and enact bold policy to reduce warming impacts.
Read here to further explore exactly how we should communicate about this critical issue:
Citations
[1] Tufekci, Zeynep. “5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating.” The Atlantic, 26 Feb. 2021, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/how-public-health-messaging-backfired/618147/.
[2] Kamarck, Elaine. “The Challenging Politics of Climate Change.” Brookings, 23 Sept. 2019, www.brookings.edu/research/the-challenging-politics-of-climate-change/.
[3] Kahan, Dan. “Why We Are Poles Apart on Climate Change.” Nature, www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.11166!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/488255a.pdf.
[4] Vozza, Stephanie. “How to Talk about Climate Change in an Emotionally Intelligent Way.” Fast Company, 15 Nov. 2019, www.fastcompany.com/90424549/how-to-talk-about-climate-change-in-an-emotionally-intelligent-way.
[5] “Perspective: Let’s Stop Talking about Climate Change.” Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, pangea.stanford.edu/news/perspective-lets-stop-talking-about-climate-change.
[6] University of British Columbia. “How to talk to people about climate change.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 March 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210330092522.htm>.
[7] Love, Shayla. “Renewable Energy Is the Climate-Change Solution That Republicans Can Get Behi.” Vice News, 24 Jan. 2020, 7- https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7eb9e/how-to-talk-to-republicans-about-climate-change.
[8] Lovins, Amory B, et al. “A Road Map for Natural Capitalism: Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken.” Understanding Business Environments, 2005, pp. 257–270., doi:10.4324/9780203992265–37.
[9] Gowen, Annie. “The Town That Built Back Green.” The Washington Post, 23 Oct. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/10/22/greensburg-kansas-wind-power-carbon-emissions/.
[10] “Why Does Cinema Ignore Climate Change?” BBC Culture, BBC, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200416-why-does-cinema-ignore-climate-change.
[11] About the Authors Sharona Shuster Sharona Shuster, et al. “10 Tips for Getting People to Talk Across Political Differences.” Greater Good, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/10_tips_for_getting_people_to_talk_across_political_differences.
