With the climate crisis, seeing can lead to believing
How showing the right photographs and graphics can fight global warming
The idiomatic landscape is filled with wise words about the importance of good visuals. Whether it’s “seeing is believing,” “a picture is worth a thousand words,” “what you see is what you get” or “show, don’t tell,” these phrases remind us that pictures and graphics can be an essential part of storytelling when it comes to the climate crisis.
And, yet, sometimes we fall short on this front. Jessica Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who has also been an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently made this point.
“After some rough encounters with eyesore figures here at the IPCC … I feel like we need a community conversation about visual communication,” she wrote on Twitter in late August. She then offered up a series of graphics that, while colorful, were pretty impenetrable for a layperson to understand.
Clearly, you don’t need to be a scientist to appreciate the value of visuals. As the Chicago Tribune put it in 2003: “Images shape public opinion, and they test public resolve and, ultimately, political will.”
But the devil is in the details when finding the right material to spur the public to climate change action.
In terms of graphics, Roz Pidcock at the publication CarbonBrief offered up guiding principles for doing it right.
First, the best graphics “draw the eye where you want it go.” As is the case with reading, there’s a flow to how people digest graphics. You need to use the right shapes, sizes and colors to highlight the most important points you want to make. Arrows and bullet points can be useful for emphasis, but “be selective,” Pidcock said.
Keeping things simple and decluttered is essential (a lesson the IPCC probably needed). Some “complexity is unavoidable to retain scientific integrity, but it’s worth removing extra ‘visual clutter’ when possible,” Pidcock wrote. “Extra visual material is unlikely to be looked at and will make it harder for the brain to create meaning from what it is seeing.”
Contextualizing a graphic with easy-to-understand metaphorical concepts is valuable (for instance, employing a color scheme with red for rising temperatures and blue for more temperate zones). In addition, interweaving text and graphics makes for a more effective product.
Well-conceived graphics can be both informative and help move the needle in the right direction (check out these great examples on single-use plastics that combine simplicity with a metaphoric image that everyone can understand).
That said, graphics rarely possess the power of a great photograph. Iconic pictures can turn a passing interest in global warming into a front-of-mind imperative with just one view. The environmental movement has seen this in the past. Take, for example, Earthrise. The photo, which was shot by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, while the spacecraft orbited the moon, changed minds about the importance of protecting humanity’s only home.
“The Earth in its surrounding dark emptiness not only seemed infinitely beautiful, it seemed infinitely fragile,” Britain’s The Independent once explained about the picture. “This wonderful image crystallized and cemented the sense of the planet’s vulnerability.” It’s also “largely credited with increasing concerns about and awareness of environmental issues,” according to sociologist Gwen Sharp.
Most researchers agree that, when it comes to photos, appealing to the emotional side of the brain is more effective than going for our intellects. But being surgical about what feelings you want to evoke is important when choosing a particular picture.
One 2014 study looked at how viewing images relating to terrorism impacted emotions. The results found that those who were given photographs of terrorist attackers “felt more of a sense that the terrorists were dangerous and threatening” and reported a greater amount of fear and anger. In contrast, those who saw victims veered to emotions like sympathy. As such, knowing your goals is important when shooting or selecting a photo.
Even when we know the type of emotions we want to elicit with a picture, understanding that people are hardwired differently makes it difficult to get the universal responses we all hope for on climate change.
At least one study found that conservatives and liberals have different reactions to “stomach-churning imagery,” according to The Atlantic. The researchers found that “conservatives tend to have more pronounced bodily responses than liberals” to upsetting photos. So, in other words, to illicit the strongest response from a conservative compared to a liberal may require a different set of images.
In a 2015 article, writer Ian Jack posed this question in The Guardian: “Can images change history?” His conclusions were somewhat unsatisfying. On the one hand, he concluded what we already know — the right photos can lead to emotional responses. But he balanced that with the fact that the most shocking pictures can lead to more aversion to the organization sharing them than to the underlying issue. Still, in the end, he concluded that all sorts of pictures can “change our perceptions of the world.”
The upshot is that whether creating or sharing a photo or graphic, the environmental movement should prioritize searching for the right ones. Even if we are not certain what will impact whom, we do know that when we get it right, it can make a huge difference.
