July 25, 2019, by Brigitte Nerlich
What is a climate change communicator to do?
In a recent article, social scientists claim that a rhetoric of deadlines to urge action on climate change is ‘dangerous’. While I agree that it might be dangerous to get into a situation where you extend deadlines forever if you cannot achieve them, setting no deadlines at all may make it difficult to talk about climate change or global heating and its impacts, as it leaves people with only a vague horizon to aim for, one that can easily recede into infinity.
In another recent article, a social scientist claims that strategic messaging, or framing your message in view of your intended audience, might not work on a grand scale. It might, perhaps, work at a small scale, namely in the context of a conversation or dialogue, “but there are no magic messages capable of overcoming strong beliefs (however poorly informed) or converting someone to your side.”
I totally accept that conversations are a good thing, much better than indoctrination, but what do you do in them? Stress the the reality of climate change? Tell people about the dangers of climate change? Highlight that there is a consensus about the reality and the dangers of climate change? Talk about time frames and time limits? Tell some people that they would be richer by investing in renewables? Tell other people that if they want their grandparents to survive the summer, they should think about where to move them? (Of course, you should also listen to what your conversation partners have to say!)
Climate change communication contestation
All these communication/conversation activities would be preconditions for people to be persuaded to act on climate change – if that’s what you want to do. However, you might just want to inform people instead. But all these things are contested, some strongly, others not so strongly, some for good reasons, some for not so good reasons, by social scientists: deadline messaging, consensus messaging, strategic messaging, danger messaging, persuading, educating and informing, etc.
Wherever a climate communicator turns and looks for help from social scientists, they find themselves confronted by warning signs. Is there a danger that this may lead to climate change communication fatigue and gradual silence on the part of communicators? What would that mean in a context where the signals of global heating are becoming ever louder, where, in a sense, human messaging is gradually being superseded by climate change doing the messaging itself?
If that is the case, we’d still need human communicators though, wouldn’t we, to discuss options and scenarios, local and global issues, risks and benefits, trends and trade-offs, and, indeed, the science and the politics of it all? So where would these communicators come from and if they did where would they go for advice about how best to communicate?
Climate change communication advice
I suppose they might go to those who study and practice climate change communication and learn from it. In the United States they may go to the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication or the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.
The Yale Programme has an interesting definition of climate change communication as “about educating, informing, warning, persuading, mobilizing and solving this critical problem. At a deeper level, climate change communication is shaped by our different experiences, mental and cultural models, and underlying values and worldviews.”
I also found a climate change communication guide published by the University of Columbia. And I bet there is more.
In the United Kingdom climate change communicators who still want to communicate might go to the Climate Communication Project and Climate Outreach.
In Germany they might consult Klimafakten or to read information produced by research institutes in Hamburg or Berlin, for example.
I am not so sure about France, but I found this, which gives some advice on climate change communication influenced by English-speaking climate change projects….
And I bet there are other resources in other countries….Here is something in Portuguese, for example….and in Chinese…..
Climate change communication and unicorns
Climate change communication is difficult and complex, but it would be a shame if those who want to engage in this activity feel too frustrated to do it; if silence replaced conversation and communication.
The problems faced by communicators of climate change are compounded by the fact that we now live in a world where education, knowledge and critical thinking are being replaced by unicorns, flying pigs and fairy tales. There is therefore a great temptation to just withdraw and shut up in the face of all the obstacles encountered when trying to speak. This would be a shame.
Image: Unicorns, Bill Benzon, Flickr
Climate outreach are just activists. Utterly incapable of seeing beyond their own blindspots.. I recall sitting next to one of their people, at an Oxford Union climate debate.Prof Lindzen, Prof Miles Alena, Mark Lynas.. she was there she said, to publicly shame the climate sceptic and she was a total activist. She also wrote publicly there to shame the activist.. this organisation was founded by someone who arguably has done more, Uk at least to polarise screw up climate communications than anyone else in the UK.actually credited with the phrase climate change denier and creating the first online climate deniers Hall of shame.. lesson here choose communicators that are not intolerant activists.
If I was mischievous, I’d say the other side, whatever you might call those who engage in climate change communication saying that it’s beneficial or not so bad etc etc., are also activists, aren’t they? And I bet they also have blindspots, haven’t say? And if, then, everybody is an activist, then activists from all sides or across a spectrum of positions should all sit down together and sort out between whom they find intolerant and why and sortthis out once and for all, if that’s possible.
maybe.. BUT.. Climate Outreach pretend they are NOT activists, but neutral. If you can’t see the problem with this, there is no hope for you to achieve successful communication. Additionally they are official, government funded, working in partnership with the IPCC in Climate Outreach case.. not critics like me, nobodies with a blog. Will the critics of say the IPCC, not just laugh,when the photos of climate activist research director, pop up, when he was painted blue on a march, alongside the video of him saying he was very surprised that the public hated blue painted activist climate visuals.(whilst reminiscing, he was on the same march) that they were very surprised about it? they’ll just laugh.. at the psychology academic who cannot see his own blindspots. choose someone neutral, not activists. because activsist DO NOT HELP YOU communication, they are counterproductive.. Maybe I’m an “activist” against people that pretend they are not activists.. this is Not the opposite.. but the neutral position..
To be on topic, and I said the same a decade ago.. the problem with climate communications, is everyone thinks it is very important, everyone seems to think someone isn’t doing it properly, it is very urgent… but nobody ever sits down and decides what it is they actually want to achieve.. ie what would successful climate change end result would look like… and then work backwards in how to achieve this.. it is all things to all people..
Climate comms, needs to decide specifically what it wants to achieve and specifically aim to achieve this, and carefully analyse why it failed or succeeded.. this means of course that there might be dozens hundred of specific climate communications goals. with very specific outcomes methods for the specific goal.. currently, if it doesn’t achieve everything, another climate change communicator comes alongside and critisies.. you’ve seen that on this very blog!
Climate Outreach, sociology history lesson, was founded by a guy that founded Rising Tide, and was a key founder of Earth First UK..(and a Greenepace director) If you dig into wayback machine, and those manifestos, etc.. it is Extinction Rebellion version 1.. !! virtually the same political statement, stated goals, etc Nothing changes, least of all activists ideas/methods. Rising Tide was anti-Electric cars and nuclear, they were very much of deep green philosophy, back to th eland, etc.. not just campaigning to stop ‘climate change’ but to change people aswell.. Are you familiar with the ‘Carbon Fairy’ ancedote for Solitaire Townsend (co founder Futerra. a company that is a professional climate change communicator) .. She found out that these greens wanted to change people, just solving CO2 was not enough for them. it made her angry.. transcript from the BBC, worth a listen as Prof Mike Hulme, Justin Rowlatt, Andrew Simms, Jonathan Porritt, Lord Gummer contribute. https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20100125_r4
BBC: Justin Rowlatt presents Analysis: Are Environmentalists Bad for the Planet?
Solitaire Townsend: I was making a speech to nearly 200 really hard core, deep environmentalists and I played a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure with my little magic wand that we do not go above two degrees of global warming. However, by waving my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger, the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over the place but there will be no climate change. And I asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised their hands.
Justin Rowlatt: That is quite shocking. I bet you were shocked, weren’t you?
Solitaire Townsend: I was angry. I wasn’t shocked. I was angry because it really showed that they wanted more. They didn’t just want to prevent climate change. They wanted to somehow change people, or at very least for people to know that they had to change.
I understand your anger. This is a longstanding issue that I think we two can’t solve. In this post I was just trying to say: imagine you are a climate change communicator and you wanted to learn stuff, say from social science, then you would find that difficult, as everywhere you turn there is an obstacle. So where do you turn? And so I listed a few sites that could be used in the event that you wanted to be a cc communicator. Some of these sites might have difficult histories or rather roots that some people find objectionable. But I agree with you, sometimes cc comms people should reflect on what they want to achieve and work backwards. I bet some do that. I am not in that scene enough to know. My beef with cc comms is actually not with cc comms but with government. As I have said before: you can communicate until the cows come home, if there is nothing you can concretely do (supported by government policies, investment, infrastructure, cooperation etc.), then the people you are communicating with/to will feel a bit deflated. Words alone are not enough. And theories alone are not enough either…
This is my main point, ref climate comms, so I’ve separated it out.
“To be on topic, and I said the same a decade ago.. the problem with climate communications, is everyone thinks it is very important, everyone seems to think someone isn’t doing it properly, it is very urgent… but nobody ever sits down and decides what it is they actually want to achieve.. ie what would successful climate change end result would look like… and then work backwards in how to achieve this.. it is all things to all people..
Climate comms, needs to decide specifically what it wants to achieve and specifically aim to achieve this, and carefully analyse why it failed or succeeded.. this means of course that there might be dozens hundred of specific climate communications goals. with very specific outcomes methods for the specific goal.. currently, if it doesn’t achieve everything, another climate change communicator comes alongside and criticizes and says you are doing it wrong, you didn’t do his, or that.. original communicator gets frustrated defence, we were not trying to, etc, etc you’ve seen that on this very blog! and all over social media..
Objectionable. Well yes.. but my main point, is they are totally ineffective! The objectionable part, is a good part of the reason why they are utterly ineffective climate communicators. In Climate Outreach case they’ve been failing for nearly. 20 years.. because they are activists. They would never sit down with the people they have been trying to smear, discredit or totally shutdown.. has George Marshall ever sat down with a Prof Lindzen, and apologised for all the smears, the hall of shame he put him in, does he still think he is in the pay of fossil fuel companies…
I ask, because Marshall had a co-author, when he was credited with creating the phrase climate change denier, and also promoted fossil fuel funded smears. This was Mark Lynas, who was also creator of the who is who of climate deniers list, and the Deniers Hall of Shames.. I asked Mark about this, and no he no longer thinks that about lindzen(wrong still, maybe, but not evil).. and he said the halls of shame were shameful..
How powerful would it be if communicator Marshall, said I was wrong, I have learnt. But no. He has written how this language is problematic, done the sage act, about how things are divisive, not once telling his audience, he was instrumental in creating the hate. Disingenuous activists hurt climate science communication, be it science or policy
Hi Brigitte, As you know, I am one of the co-authors on the deadlines commentary. I think in an ideal world, we could have improved the article with some references to alternative approaches – although it would have been extremely challenging to do this satisfactorily within a short article. However, I do also agree with the Matthew Nisbet article (your second link) that strategic communication for persuasion is a sub-optimal starting point.
I am confused that the article could be interpreted in such a way that people would be dissuaded from talking about climate change. Of course, there is a great deal of critical social science literature about science, society and the role of communication. But that is also the case with many other areas of society and professional practice. Have any GPs decided to stop practicing because they read some medical sociology? That seems doubtful to me, but seems to be the sort of dynamic you are claiming (I might have misunderstood). If there was *no* guidance for talking about climate change, then maybe I would be concerned. But as you ably point out, there are plenty of guides out there already for talking about climate science.
The bottom line is that if people want to talk about the science of climate change then that of course is fine. But if your main aim is to try and promulgate action (as is the case with deadlines), then I don’t think science is the best place to start
https://medium.com/making-climate-social/strange-times-for-climate-change-deadlines-politics-and-our-flickering-futures-240cdc345ad3
Realistically speaking I don’t think that anybody who wants to be a climate change communicator will be deterred by all the potential barriers to communication highlighted by social scientists. I was painting a rather bleak picture here. But what is the point of highlighting all these barriers and problems and complexities, if one cannot point to anything positive? GPs might indeed not be deterred from practicing by things written in the field of medical sociology, but if there were (I bet there are) medical sociologists pointing out all the things that are problematic about how they communicate with patients without offering them some sort of advice how to do that better, I think they might be a bit annoyed (but yes, practitioners in all fields of science, tech and medicine will probably not be overly concerned by some of what’s written in science, tech and medicine studies – but that should also be something to reflect on, I suppose….) Anyway, my point is that those scicomm and climate comm people who DO want to engage with STS stuff relating to science and climate comms might feel a bit miffed if the only things they see are those things that they are supposed not to do for reasons they might sometimes not quite understand…
For anyone who can’t access the first link on deadlines because of the paywall – there is a free to access version here (hopefully!) https://rdcu.be/bLRav