5 Tips to Talk Persuasively About Climate Disruption
Tags: Climate Action, Psychology, Sustainability, Climate Change, Writing

5 Tips to Talk Persuasively About Climate Disruption Katrine Follow Dec 15 · 5 min read

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Someone close to me does not believe in human-caused climate disruption.

He’s a successful businessman and highly rational. How is it possible that he doesn’t believe in the scientific consensus? After all, 97% of climate scientists agree that human activities are causing climate disruption.

People develop defence mechanisms to avoid the uncomfortable truths around global warming, explains Per Espen Stoknes. He is a psychologist and economics PhD who focuses on climate psychology, climate economics, and climate policy.

If your job is in the fossil fuels industry, or you depend on cheap gas (thanks to a long car commute to work, say), it is psychologically much harder to admit that your lifestyle is disrupting the air than if you work in the re-insurance industry (which daily calculates climate risks) or drive an electric car.

— Stoknes, Per Espen. What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (p. 107). Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.

How can we talk more persuasively about climate disruption to get past people’s mental defence mechanisms?

1. Paint a Picture of a Beautiful Future

I feel disheartened reading about the imminent catastrophes in our news. “Stop travelling,” we’re told, and still we are headed for tragedy.

Instead, we need a joint vision to fight for, where we are healthier, breathe fresher air, and enjoy wildlife.

Here’s a beautiful world described by the author Mike Berners-Lee:

The air is fresher. Life is healthier, longer, more relaxed, more fun and more exciting. Our diets are varied, tasty and healthy. More of us get out as much as we want to, both socially and physically. Travel is easier — but we spend less time in transit. We feel freer to live life in whatever way seems meaningful to each of us at the time, in negotiation with other people’s equal right to do likewise. There is less violence at every level. Cities are vibrant whilst the countryside teems with wildlife. Our jobs are more interesting, and the pressures are more often self-imposed. We expect, insist on and get higher standards of trust and truth, in politics, in the media and in fact everywhere. We are better connected to the people around us and to our sense of the global community. We give more of our time and attention to others and we notice and enjoy more of what is going on around us. We might compete with each other for fun but where it really matters we collaborate better than ever before. Berners-Lee, Mike. There Is No Planet B (p. 9). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Steal some lines for the next time you are selling people on our better future?

2. Make the Numbers Come to Life With Imagery

Climate terms include the 2-degree target, the 1.5-degree target, CO2 levels in ppm, and other technical words.

Just understanding the terms requires hours of studying. No wonder there are still many climate sceptics and deniers out there.

To convey how we are burning our globe, we can use imagery.

Look at how Per Espen Stoknes makes the numbers come to life:

“Let’s imagine that CO2 is a brown haze heavier than air. All CO2 thus falls down to earth and creates a blanket layer, a pool around us that we are ‘swimming’ in. How high would this layer be if spread out evenly all around the world? It used to be around fifteen feet before the industrial revolution. But humans have now added around seven extra feet so we’re today immersed in a dense twenty-two-foot-high fog all over the world. Feels a bit more suffocating than ‘400 ppm,’ doesn’t it?”

Stoknes, Per Espen. What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (p. 70). Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.

I’ve tried describing how we are swimming in a “dense twenty-two-foot-high [7 meter] fog” to friends. Trust me — it works wonders.

Photo by Raphael Rychetsky on Unsplash

3. Appeal to Our Loss Aversion

We hate giving up something we already have. If you’re like most people, you’ll feel much worse about losing $20 than about winning $20. This concept is known as loss aversion.

How can we use loss aversion to our advantage?

Stoknes suggests that we talk about insurance to avoid higher costs in the future.

“One way to utilize this framing for climate could be: We must build a climate defense today so we can avoid the climate declaring war on us in the future. Future climate mayhem may release waves of unrest, riots, refugees, and terrorists. Good climate policy is good military strategy — something the US Department of Defense has emphasized in its own reports.”

— What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action by Per Espen Stoknes

Insurance is something most people understand. I’ll certainly try this with my highly rational, business-minded friend.

4. Use Bold Words

The phrase “climate change” is bland and plays into the hands of sceptics. After all, does “climate change” need to be caused by humans? And could “climate change” even be a good thing?

Let’s look at alternative words.

“Climate cancer” was put forth as an alternative in an engaging 3-minute video by Simon Sinek, the author behind the bestseller book “Start With Why.”

Stoknes suggests “climate disruption” and “global burning” as alternatives.

I’ve chosen “climate disruption” in this article. How does it sound?

5. Communicate Certainty

The public opinion evolves continuously. We debate and shift the boundaries for what is normal versus what is radical. In climate communication, we need to be explicit about these boundaries.

We should show that we know that human behaviours cause climate disruption. We can highlight that it’s an outlier opinion to think anything else. After all, 97% of scientists, the United Nations, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and governments across the world state that human activities cause climate disruptions.

Some questions are not up for debate. Just like I won’t engage if someone tries to argue that the Earth is flat.

Instead, we can debate how bad and frequent the following extreme weather, drought, and other disasters will be. Or how we should act. Or our underlying values around national and international solidarity which form the basis for our policy reaction.