Religion is down. A Pew Research Center survey found that 29% of U.S. adults said they had no religious affiliation, an increase of 6 percentage points from 2016. In my country, Norway, surveys suggest that half the population does not believe in God.
But the truth is, there's still plenty of religious belief. It just takes different forms today. Some people are religious about exercising - others about science. One of the most prominent religions today is environmentalism.
Now, let's be clear:
I'm a devout Christian and believe in global warming. I work in climate communication professionally and have dedicated much of my life to it.
But I also grew up in and around religion, and the present-day messaging around climate is shockingly similar.
Here's some stuff I heard as a young boy in Church:
Stop doing the things you like
You should be ashamed of yourself
You're going to hell if you don't change
Sound familiar?
Climate communicators today, particularly those in the mainstream media, spend most of their time telling the public:
Stop using plastic straws, gas-powered vehicles, and eating red meat
You should be ashamed of taking that flight / eating that steak / forgetting to sort your garbage
The world is going to burn, and your grandchildren will suffer if you don't change
The backlash of negative messaging
As a young man in my Party Peder phase, the stairway to heaven was much less attractive than the highway to hell.
No wonder the public is abandoning religion and similarly giving up on the environment. Nobody responds well to super-negative messaging.
A friend recently told me he was ashamed of booking a flight for his next vacation. I asked him how he coped with the feeling of shame. He admitted that the solution to his cognitive dissonance was either a justification (he recently installed a heat pump in his house, so booking a flight was ok) or some denial (the whole thing is too overwhelming, so let's think about something else).
My point is that the climate messaging didn't make him change his actions. It only made him feel bad while doing the stuff that used to make him enthusiastic.
Is the best yet to come?
And yet, I'm still a Christian. Clearly, it contains something of value.
So, what does Christianity offer that's worth putting up with negativity? And what can we learn from religion that we can take into climate communication to save the planet?
In Christianity, there's a very particular narrative underlying the entire religion: the best is yet to come. We can continue aiming toward good, but ultimately the world's fate rests in God's hands.
Contrast that with climate communication, which insists that the responsibility is squarely on our shoulders - each of us as individuals.
It's a tremendous burden. So people ignore it.
Environmentalism is like conservative Christianity but without grace. In religion, you're given the opportunity to redeem yourself when you make mistakes, and you're offered salvation.
But where is redemption in the story of climate communication? What would salvation look like?
We don't know. There's very little positive upside to the story the mainstream environmental movement tells. Only "avoid or postpone terrible consequences."
We need to move from fear to stories of an attractive green future
The algorithms are monetizing our fears. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of doomsday messaging, soon, that's all you see.
The Washington Post recently ran a story about college campuses offering therapy for climate change anxiety. The American Psychological Association found that nearly half of younger Americans say eco-anxiety affects their daily lives.
The narrative often goes like this: We have broken free from the old chains of religion and are finally free to be who we want to be. Paradoxically, we have transferred the same shame and guilt to our narrative about global warming.
What if we tell a positive story about a better world that is yet to come that people would actually want to be in?
That's the environmental messaging I want to see and am working to create.
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