
It shouldn't be so hard to convince people to protect the planet they depend on. Despite massive climate change communication, popular support for climate action is not rising. What causes this?
A communication subdiscipline
The other day, while researching a book project. I dug into messaging and storytelling on the green shift and climate change. The concepts of 'climate communication' and 'climate leadership' kept showing up a lot.
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It made me wonder what separates climate communication from regular communication.
Is it a type of communication with another set of rules? Are the effects of such communication measured differently than all other communication?
Being a professional communicator, I am used to measuring the impact of strategic communication by a set of key performance indicators.
For example, I consider communication ineffective if the messaging doesn't affect the target audience's perceptions, attitudes, or actions.
A generation of anxious doomsday preppers
Going on with the research, I read surveys showing a stable level of concern about global warming. People are generally not more concerned now than they used to be, even though the "code red" button is pushed, and the messaging's getting increasingly alarming.
In other words, a massive amount of climate communication does not lead to more action.
Another survey shows that 25 percent of Norwegian teenagers suffer from climate anxiety.
Really? One out of four young people having trouble sleeping because of the climate messaging?
To understand why let's check out some recent climate communication. Here's the storyline from the UN's General Secretary, concluding the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27):
We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator…We can sign a climate solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact.
He said that a window of opportunity remains open, but only a narrow shaft of light remains. And then, he states that the global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade.
That is a remarkably harsh statement. We have seven years to prevent armageddon.
No wonder why teenagers are getting anxious.
We need people to believe that a green future is better than today
So when climate change messaging leads to hopelessness, paralysis, or denial, that is, by definition, ineffective communication (given that the goal is to drive action).
Hell doesn't sell!
We know from psychology and behavioral economics that both fear and anxiety suck as motivation for change.
Per Espen Stoknes has documented a vast amount of meta-analysis in his excellent book: “What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action.”
Shaming or frightening people tends to create the opposite effect of what we want; cognitive dissonance, justifying, denial, or even resistance.
The environmental movement has been screaming, “the world is ending,” for decades. And yet, surveys show that people care even less about the environment today than they did in the 90s.
So it’s time to realize that screaming even louder will not motivate more people to change.
A radical new climate communication
Instead, we need to shift our messaging to tell a powerful, positive story about the green shift that people find attractive.
As long as the mental picture of the green transition is associated with losing comfort, facing a bad future, and a threat to our identity, we will never gain popular support.
And popular support is just what we need.
I’ve spent 20 years as a professional communicator. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best way to move people to action is to tell them a story they actually want to be a part of.
Climate change IS an urgent problem. But we’ve spent three decades proving that negative, doomsday messaging simply doesn’t work.
Let’s stop wasting time on ineffective messaging. We don’t have time to waste.
If we can tell a better story, a story about the green shift that, instead of scaring people, gets them excited about the future, we can finally join together to save the planet we depend on.
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