After the DANA in Valencia, concern about the proliferation of natural disasters has multiplied by 17 in Spain in a single year, according to the latest survey carried out by the CISand the climate emergency has risen one place since 2023, becoming the second problem in the world that most worries Spaniards for the next ten years, only behind wars.
However, sociological research suggests that this does not have to imply long-term awareness of the issue. Society’s concern about problems such as the climate emergency usually comes in waves. That is to say, at any moment we can forget about this threat again, unless we shield a true commitment to the cause.
“A traumatic event related to an extreme weather phenomenon generates concern, but the strength of this memory can quickly decrease as the event becomes more distant,” he points out in one of his research. Climate Outreachan entity fully focused on investigating what are those ‘buttons’ that communicators, scientists, and activists have to touch if they want to really involve ordinary people in the climate fight.
Habituation and demotivation
This organization has been studying this issue for more than twenty years and knows that human beings have an enormous capacity to adapt to new circumstances. “People can come to accept periodic and increasingly serious emergency situations,” they recalled in one of their reports, After the floods (After the floods), ten years ago.
Nameerah Hameed, advocacy director and political analyst at Climate Outreach, explains that the persistent social inaction surrounding the climate crisis is due, among other things, to the way in which the threat is sometimes tended to be communicated is causing People are demotivated and scared.
“Sometimes when we keep talking about how terrible the problems the climate crisis is causing, people end up looking away from the fact that truly every small action can trigger change,” explains Hameed.
The work of the future has to be much more directed towards climate communication and not so much towards climate science.
Nameerah Hameed
— Advocacy Director and Policy Analyst at Climate Outreach
“The work of the future has to be much more directed towards climate communication and not so much towards climate science,” he argues. Twenty years ago, he points out, it was about talking to people about greenhouse gases or how important it was not to reach 1.5ºC. However, a large part of the climate sector is still carrying out the same type of work than twenty years ago, even though the world has gone much further.” Now, he says, the key is to “understand how people think about the climate and, more importantly, how they feel about it.”
Communicators must give up the microphone
Activists, communicators, journalists and scientists can help people make the leap from passive to active worry, according to Hameed. “One of the ways is that not all communication has to be carried out by us,” he says. “Often we should pass the microphone to other types of messengers, different from each other.” Climate Outreach concludes in much of its research that, in this sense, encouraging a national program of debates and conversations, such as citizen assemblies, led not by green activists, but by representatives of different communities, could be one of the keys, since “Communication between peers” is one of those that obtains the best results.
“These events would be designed to allow people to express and discuss their concerns, fears, dreams and hopes for the future in relation to the topic,” they explain. Isolated examples of this type of initiatives have already been given. When they have occurred, they say, a surprising pattern has been observed: people go from disinterest to a position of committed concern.
When you give people the microphone, they go from disinterest to a position of committed concern.
The expert gives several examples of “excellent” programs that are being developed in the United Kingdom, such as Cricket for Climate (Cricket for Climate). “The United Kingdom is a country almost as obsessed with cricket as Europe is with football. Therefore, if people start to see, for example, cricket players or professional footballers talking about the climate crisis, connecting it with the sport in question, that encourages ordinary people to take action, because they are seeing people they admire. doing it.”
Avoid polarization
For these experts, overcoming polarization in those countries where it is impeding action on climate change is essential. In the United Kingdom, for example, Hameed explains, practically everyone, regardless of their ideology, feels attracted to the issue of climate and the environment.
In Spain Vox is taking over different communities that, exposed to other types of messages, could have joined the environmental cause, such as rural areas
Carles Porcel
— Skills trainer for politicians and activists
Carles Porcel, skills trainer for politicians and activists and member of the Valencia Climate Emergency Alliance, agrees with this entity that communicators cannot forget about people with conservative ideas. The climate crisis cannot be an issue solely for the left, he believes. “We must adapt different messages to different ideologies,” he says. “We have to restructure the way we communicate.”
For Porcel, many activists and politicians do not understand the importance of human subjectivity. “Someone who is conservative does not necessarily have to be a denialist,” he maintains. In Spain, he points out, Vox is taking over different communities that, exposed to other types of messages, could have joined the environmental cause, such as rural areas.
In the United Kingdom, Hameed explains, the north London area is not famous for climate activism and many of them are conservatives, but that does not mean that they cannot commit to the cause in other ways. “When we talk about climate action they think that we are asking them to go out into the streets and demonstrate, but there is no reason,” he says. “For example, we noticed that everyone there has a huge garden, and that they spend hours and hours taking care of the plants. We don’t need to talk to them about melting glaciers, we can talk to them about how the local bee population is decreasing, and what are the ways to help increase this bee population again, such as controlling air pollution.”
“It also doesn’t work when we tell people ‘there’s a lot to do, there’s a lot to do!’” they explain from Climate Outreach. “However, it is most effective when we say, ‘You know? In your neighborhood hundreds of people are installing heat pumps’, or ‘You know? In your children’s schools, many people are dedicated to achieving cleaner air.’”
If you are talking about hell, well, people don’t like it. We cannot despise a fundamental part of human beings, which are emotions.
Carles Porcel, skills trainer for politicians and activists
For Hameed, many times communicators, scientists, or activists talk about complex concepts such as 1.5ºC or net zero emissions to a point that ends up meaning nothing to people. “The key is to speak like human beings, in the form of stories: stories stay in people’s minds,” he maintains. It is also important to try to have conversations and not “conferences”.
On the other hand, the alarmist tone used by certain scientists or communicators does not usually work, except for very specific sectors of society. “If you are talking about hell, then people don’t find it pleasant,” Porcel agrees. “We cannot despise a fundamental part of human beings, which are emotions. We are rational at times, not always. “It would be interesting for scientists to train in some aspects of the social sciences.”
It is not an unattainable goal
Achieving this involvement on the part of society would not be something unprecedented, since, as Climate Outreach recalls, profound changes have occurred in the past: social pressure was decisive in ending the slave trade, despite which had enormous consequences for the global superpowers of the time, and, in 2020, governments around the world significantly changed the lifestyles of their populations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
None of these transformations occurred solely through technocratic changes: they required widespread acceptance and rapidly changing social and moral norms around the need to act, Climate Outreach concludes. Attitudes and actions that previously seemed “radical” became normalized and there was a sustained shift in what is politically and socially acceptable.
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