BaCCC/Module 2/Lesson 3/Part 1

Module 2, Lesson 3, Part 1: Communicating the Urgency of the Climate Emergency

Photos of extreme weather

Introduction

The focus of this lesson is on communicating the urgency of climate change to others. It will cover challenges and barriers to communicating the urgency effectively. Then it will go over what everyone needs to know (in plain language) about the climate emergency. Finally, you will have the opportunity to develop a climate emergency awareness campaign, whether short or long, simple or complex. This will be an important tool in your climate champion toolbox. You might want to start thinking about it now.

Course Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

• overcome challenges to effectively communicate the urgency of addressing the climate emergency;
• convey to others what everyone needs to know about the climate emergency; and
• develop a communication strategy to explain the urgency of the climate emergency.

Terminology

The following terms are important in understanding the science behind climate change. If you want to remember them, write their meanings in your learning journal as you encounter them in the course content.

• barriers
• biases
• campaign
• cognitive shields
• disinformation
• existential
• fossil fuels
• metaphor
• multiplier effect
• vicious circle
• vicious circle barriers

Challenges and barriers to communication

“	Clearly, we haven’t yet succeeded in adequately communicating the climate crisis to the general public, let alone countering those who profit from sowing doubt that there even is a problem.	”
—Joel Makower

Why is it so challenging to talk about the urgency of climate change? Here are some reasons. See if you can think of any others.

Challenges and barriers to communicating the urgency of the climate emergency

Psychological barriers. Many people feel overwhelmed or disempowered by the scale of the climate crisis, which can lead to feelings of apathy, denial or inaction. Communicating the urgency of the situation to these people requires addressing these psychological barriers and providing people with a sense of agency (“I can do something”) and aspiration (“I want to do something”).
Cognitive biases. This means that our mind habits can get in the way of accepting new knowledge, especially if it does not fit with our inclinations or prejudices, such as our political affiliation. We seek information that confirms our current beliefs. We may have cognitive rigidity – an inability to update prior beliefs. Or we have false memories, believing that weather events in the past were worse than they are today. Dealing with these challenges would likely need an advanced degree in psychology.
Our brains live in the present. Human brains are not used to thinking about the future. They spent two or three hundred thousand years focused on the present: “Find food. Make shelter. Mate!” According to Nsikan Akpan, “We only began to contemplate time, and by extension the future, within the last few hundred years.” However, climate change is no longer a future phenomenon. Every day, the impacts of climate change are happening somewhere in the world.
Read: "Your Brain Stops You From Taking Climate Change Seriously"
It is a slow-moving emergency. Climate change is still seen by many (those who have not yet been impacted, except perhaps by the rising cost of food) as a far-off threat. The human brain does not get very excited about things that are not happening now. Climate change is definitely happening now, and its pace is certainly speeding up.
It is too gradual. Our brains accept gradual change much better than they accept abrupt change. More abrupt climate change would have triggered outrage and protest. We can help people see how abrupt and sudden today’s climate change is in geological terms – everything has happened just since the Industrial Revolution, and mostly just in the past few decades.
Climate change is the “wrong” kind of threat. The human brain is “a fantastic threat detector. The problem is that the brain is especially attuned to threats from agents,” like creatures or other people. Is there some way to personify climate change?
Listen to Daniel Gilbert at "Why Climate Change Threats Don’t Trigger an Immediate Response From Human Brains"
Cognitive shields. Our mental defence mechanism is biased in favour of the status quo, business as usual and the idea that everything is fine, move along, “because any change involves effort and uncertainty.” We need to show people how often they do accept change in their lives (getting married, having a baby, etc.) so that they will open up to learning about climate change.
You can learn more from Zhao and Luo’s (2021) article at "A Framework to Address Cognitive Biases of Climate Change"
So many distractions . . . oh look, a shiny coin! Life in the 21st century is full of distractions, whether you live in urban or rural, developed or developing areas. Ironically, many of the distractions in rural developing areas these days involve trying to survive the impacts of climate change. We can ask people to carve out just a tiny bit of time in their busy lives for learning about climate change.
Fear. Let’s face it. Climate change is scary, and who likes scary things? It is like hiding under the covers when we think there is a monster in the room. Whether or not the monster is real, hiding does not deal with the problem. We can encourage people to “feel the fear and do it anyway” (Susan Jeffers). (The “it” is facing the climate emergency.)
We are disconnected from the rest of nature. Anywhere that people live in cities, it becomes more and more difficult for them to feel a connection to the natural world. We can include nature breaks in our events and nature photographs in our publications – and remind people that our lives are sustained by the rest of nature.
“In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” — Baba Dioum
We are averse to sacrifice. This is perhaps only a problem in some cultures and not others. Some parents no longer put their children’s welfare before their own, and they do not want to make sacrifices for the sake of their offspring. We can encourage people to think (and act) like our ancestors.
This is a crisis of empathy and compassion. Many people have lost the will or the ability to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. They, therefore, do not care about the impacts of climate change on other people (or other beings) if those impacts have not already affected them. We can remind people of the Golden Rule, which exists in all traditions: Do to others what you would like others to do to you . . . another way of saying “let’s treat others with empathy and compassion.”
This is a crisis of imagination. A lot of people, perhaps due to too many screens and too much entertainment in their lives, have lost their ability to be creative and to picture the world in different ways. Because they have no new ideas, they cannot picture themselves getting involved in the climate change movement, so they ignore it. We can encourage people to visualise a clean, beautiful world without fossil fuel pollution . . . a world that is safer, healthier, more peaceful and more equitable.
A lack of trust in politicians. Unfortunately, it is elected officials who sign climate change policies into law. Enough said. Politicians need to earn the trust of their constituents.
A lack of trust in media sources. In some cases, people do not trust the sources of information about climate change, or they may have conflicting beliefs about the issue. We can remind people to trust their own life experience and to triangulate their news sources (like a triangle, get their news from three different but reputable points of view – to find the truth where all three overlap).
Disinformation is rampant. Fossil fuel companies, as well as professional and amateur climate change deniers, have quite deliberately and purposely spread false information about the climate emergency in order to delay government action. These companies put a lot of funding into their disinformation campaigns, which have been highly successful at confusing people so that they give up trying to understand. There is no one right way to fight disinformation, but we must fight it; otherwise, the fossil fuel corporations and the climate change deniers will win the communication battle.
Complexity and uncertainty. Climate change is a complex, multifaceted issue that involves many interconnected systems and variables. Communicating the urgency of the situation requires simplifying this complexity and communicating it in a way that is accurate and scientifically sound, yet easy to understand. Learning the basic “story” of carbon dioxide (too much of anything is pollution) and its role in climate change is a first step.
The climate has always changed. And it is huge. So, a lot of people believe that we cannot have an impact on it. Remind people that every year, our industrial economies are emitting about 50 BILLION TONNES of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That is 50,000,000,000 tonnes – a lot of zeros.

Activity

1. Did you think of any other reasons that make talking about the climate crisis with other people so difficult? If so, write them in your learning journal.

2. Do any of the people in your family or community ignore the climate crisis or deny its existence? If so, try to find out why. Write their responses in your learning journal. They may give you insight into how to overcome the challenges above.

Communicating the urgency of the climate emergency requires addressing these challenges in a thoughtful and strategic way, while also staying true to the science and the urgency of the situation.