One of the best ways to talk about climate change is to connect over shared values like family and community. (Photo: Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash)
One of the most important things you can do about climate change is to talk about it.
People trust their peers, family members and loved ones more than they trust experts, scientists and environmental organizations. You can talk to people about climate change in ways that we can’t. You are more likely to open people’s minds.
We know this can be tough when it’s with people who don’t share your perspective. We’ve put together some resources to help you learn to talk to people in ways that will bring us closer, not further entrench people in their existing positions.
The most important thing to remember when talking about an issue with those who don’t share your views is that people cannot communicate effectively when they feel threatened. Direct attacks — whether in the form of arguments, evidence or name-calling — limit our capacity for reason, empathy and self-reflection. First, we must make people feel safe and heard and then find common ground.
Nine essential resources for climate conversations
CliMate, your conversation coach
This fun and simple chatbot on Facebook Messenger will teach you how stop arguing and start understanding people through a choose-your-own adventure style practice conversation. You’ll get to choose your responses from a set of options, and your conversation coach will guide you through it, providing insight into the reaction your responses might elicit.
Conversation cycle cheat sheet
This five-step conversation cycle was developed by Karin Tamerius of Smart Politics. Drawing on expertise in social and political psychology and extensive experience with online dialogues, she developed this conversation technique to help people have difficult conversations.
This cheat sheet gives you a summary of each of the five steps in a handy graphic that you can save to your phone for when you need it.
Creating the conditions for action
In an affirming talk, social psychologist Renée Lertzman discusses the emotional effects of climate change and offers insights on how psychology can help us discover how to cultivate the creativity and resilience needed to act on environmental issues.
Building unity on the future we want
In this podcast, Sonia Theroux, the Executive Director of Leadnow shares her ideas about how to build unity around the things that are important to our communities. She talks about how leadership in this moment is about vision building, listening, finding hope, and making space for civil discourse.
Connecting over shared values
In this inspiring and pragmatic talk, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe shows how the key to having a real discussion with someone who doesn’t believe in climate science is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion and not by rehashing the same data and facts we’ve been repeating for years. “We can’t give in to despair,” she says. “We have to go out and look for the hope we need to inspire us to act — and that hope begins with a conversation, today.”
Conversation starters
It can be hard to initiate a conversation about climate change. In the conversation cycle described above, you’ll notice the first step is “ask.” Here are some questions that you can use to break the ice.
- Have you been affected at all by the heat wave, flood, forest fires, drought, happening in your community?
- Do you feel concerned about the security of jobs, food and homes as our climate changes?
- How do you feel about the climate strikes that youth are leading around the world?
Topics to find common ground
When discussing climate change with someone who doesn’t agree with you, it’s important to find common ground to build trust so you can move forward in the conversation. It may feel daunting, so here are some things related to climate change that may be easy to agree on:
- We want a promising future for our kids and future generations
- We want to be prepared for and protected from the impacts of extreme weather events
- We want to be healthy and have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink
- We want good, stable, well-paying jobs and economic security in a changing world
- We care about nature and wildlife and the health of local and global ecosystems
Why facts don’t change our minds
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
In this thoughtful article, James Clear examines the role of social connection when it comes to changing belief systems. This provides good insight into how we approach any conversation where we intend to change someone’s core beliefs. Clear’s primary message is that convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. “Facts don’t change our minds. Friendship does.”
I’m right and you’re an idiot
This is often the narrative in our heads when we communicate with people who don’t share our views. It’s also the title of a book by James Hoggan. He argues that a toxic smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and tribalism stifles discussion and debate, creates resistance to change and thwarts our ability to solve our collective problems, including climate change. Through insightful interviews with wise thought leaders, Hoggan focuses on proven techniques to foster more powerful and effective communication.
