How to encourage more people to talk about climate change

IT is axiomatic that you cannot solve a problem if you do not admit that it exists – and the best way to admit that it exists is to talk about it. This is particularly true with regard to climate change.

For more than four decades, the state of the climate has been part of the national conversation, especially when serious weather events linked to a warming world such as droughts, floods, heat waves and hurricanes occur. Between these emergencies, the climate often withdraws to a secondary problem – or less. One pair of studies – one from 2015, one from 2021 – revealed that only 35% of Americans even discuss climate change from time to time. Since 2009, respondents in surveys have been more likely to say that they discuss the climate “rarely” or “never” than “occasionally” or “often”. Now a new study in Plos climate Explore what the authors call “climatic silence” and offers an overview of how to break it.

Any public discussion of a political or social question can be subject to what is called a “spiral of silence”. Less people hear a spoken subject, the less likely they are raising it themselves, which leads to even fewer people while discussing and less to raise the question. The reverse is also true: the more people discuss and debate a subject, the more likely it is that other people will join the conversation. In the case of climate change, the latter leads to what researchers call a “proclic social feedback loop”. It is this loop – or in lack – that the authors of Plos a The paper was looking for.

To conduct their research, they have analyzed three existing studies by various research teams carried out in 2020 and 2021 in which a total of more than 3,000 people were invited to their beliefs and feelings with regard to climate change. In surveys, the subjects answered questions to find out if they believe that there is a scientific consensus on global warming; How certain they are that global warming is real; Assuming that they accept that it is indeed real, that they believe that humans are responsible for it; How much they are concerned about global warming; How much risk of global warming arise for themselves, their families and their communities; That they think that global warming is a bad or a good thing; What an effort makes an effort that their families and friends make to fight against the problem; As it is important for their family, their friends and, significantly, to take these measures; And how often they intend to talk about global warming in the media. Finally, they were asked how frequency they discussed global warming with family and friends.

What the surveys did not respond was whether it was all the initial variables that conduit Discussions – a significant causal measure – or if they existed side by side. The new study carried out statistical analyzes of surveys to take this determination.

“These surveys have not analyzed how the independent variables influence the discussion on the climate,” explains Margaret Orr, a doctoral student in the communications department of George Mason University and the main author of the newspaper. “They simply signal the results of the survey without examining any interaction between the variables.”

In the entire group of samples, the researchers found that all the variables except three led to increased discussions on climate change. The three who triggered little or no conversation were: how convinced the respondents were that climate change occurs; believing in a scientific consensus that it is; And the belief that humans cause the problem. These are three fairly powerful factors – some that should arouse concern and conversation. Researchers have an idea of ​​the reason they don’t.