Nine percent of Americans are dismissive of climate change—they don’t believe it is even happening. By contrast, 58 percent are either alarmed or concerned about the problem, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. In the middle, 17 percent are cautious—they haven’t made up their minds.
Yet, the Dismissives take up much of the air in climate change discussions, airing their disdain with assurance whenever and wherever they can.
What to do about these people? Don’t try to convince them—you’re asking for defeat if you do, says Katherine Hayhoe in Saving Us: A Climate Scientists’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Focus instead on those who might listen—the other 91 percent, she says, and she packs a book full of ideas of how to speak of climate change, to whom, when, and how.
This is a book as much about communication as it is about climate. Hayhoe provides us with plenty of facts to use, but she recommends we tell our stories rather than bombarding people with facts. Show what worries us, and why, and engage others by finding common ground in things we care about. It’s a book to keep on your bookshelf for reference when you’re not sure where to go next in the climate debate.
Specifically, she says:
• Start with something you have in common—gardening, knitting, hiking, cooking. Talk about how climate change is affecting the foods we grow, the pests we fight, the trails we hike. Then show what people are doing to fix this. Often, she says, you can find excellent examples and solutions—cutting food waste, electrifying public transport, supporting the use of solar power in poor nations that often grow our food. These improve the economy, clean up the air and water, and make our lives easier.
•Don’t shame. Look instead for common moral goalposts. Empathize with others. Hayhoe quotes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:
If you really want to change someone’s mind in a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness.
• Social contagion is real and can be an asset and a liability. Misinformation can spread quickly. But so can good practices. Once somebody in a neighborhood gets solar panels, others follow, and soon you have a cluster. Same way with electric vehicles, low-water gardening, composting and just about anything we might do as individuals that can cause a ripple effect in our community.
• Talk about it. The Dismissives are often loud and insistent, whereas the rest of us don’t want to ruffle feathers. But, she says, you don’t need to be militant. Just tell your story—how climate change has affected you, and what’s you’ve chosen to do about. People listen to and remember stories. Facts turn them off or confuse them.
• Practice hope:
Real hope doesn’t usually come knocking on the door of our brains univited…. If we want to find it, we have to roll up our sleeves and go out and look for it. If we do, chances are we’ll find it. And then we have to practice it.
How? Search for and collect good news, success stories, inspiration. We can’t avoid the impacts of climate change—many are already here. But, she says:
The research I do is clear: it is not too late to avoid the most serious and dangerous impacts. Our choices will determine what happens….Together, we can save ourselves.
— Pat Prijatel
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