The past couple of years have been challenging. Unfortunately, divisive topics and conversations appear to be on the rise. When friends, family and neighbours don’t agree on things that matter to them, it can be distressing.
When people get passionate about an issue like climate change and believe a fundamental injustice is occurring, their heated conversations can backfire and create even more division.
Introducing CliMate, your climate conversation coach
This fun, simple chatbot on Facebook Messenger will teach you how stop arguing and start understanding people. In a guided practice conversation, you’ll get to choose responses from a set of options, and CliMate will provide insight on the reaction your responses might elicit.
We know that conversations about climate change can bring up all sorts of emotions, like frustration, despair, anger and embarrassment. CliMate will help you cultivate empathy and keep your conversations productive. It’s also sure to make you chuckle, especially if you’ve tried having these sorts of conversations already.
This isn’t about winning an argument; it’s about learning to have productive conversations based on common ground and shared values.
Give it a try! Launch the chatbot
CliMate is rooted in science. The approach is based on the work of Karin Tamerius of Smart Politics. Drawing on expertise in social and political psychology and extensive experience with online dialogues, she developed a five-step method to help people have difficult conversations.
While CliMate will help you have less polarized conversations about climate change, it can also be useful for any potentially divisive conversation topics.
Once you’ve launched the chatbot in Facebook Messenger, use the menu located where you would normally type to get started.
If you encounter a problem using CliMate, contact our web team at webteam@davidsuzuki.org. In your email, please include the browser version and device you are using.
Put down your megaphone and start listening! Meet CliMate – our new chatbot that will coach you on how to have productive conversations about climate change.