{"id":3880,"date":"2019-09-26T17:23:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T17:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=3880"},"modified":"2019-09-26T17:23:03","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T17:23:03","slug":"the-way-we-talk-about-climate-change-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2019\/09\/26\/the-way-we-talk-about-climate-change-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Way We Talk About Climate Change Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Boulder Weekly<\/a><\/em>
by Angela K. Evans<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The climate crisis has been making headlines recently, spurred by the worldwide youth climate strikes on Sept. 20 and U.N. Climate Summit on Sept. 23. Whether it\u2019s been Greta Thunberg chastising U.N. leaders over inaction or the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report documenting the strain climate change is having on the Earth\u2019s oceans, every day it\u2019s something. But maybe that\u2019s a good thing, says Max Boykoff<\/a>, environmental studies professor and director of Center for Science and Technology Policy Research<\/a> at the University of Colorado Boulder.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Media] saturation has shown itself to change cultural perceptions in significant ways,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to look back through time, look at the gay rights movement, look at movements for racial justice, look at women\u2019s rights, looking at perceptions of world war, look at support for the Vietnam War \u2014 that saturation through the media forced sets of conversations, reflections, reconsiderations.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last 20 years or so, Boykoff has been researching how the media covers climate change and what effect it might have on public and political opinion and action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His work led to the creation of the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)<\/a> at CU Boulder, which tracks climate change coverage in roughly 100 news sources across TV, radio and print in 43 countries around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change intersects with almost every aspect of people\u2019s daily lives, Boykoff says \u2014 our lived attitudes, tensions, perspectives and behaviors. Therefore climate change shows up across a variety of themes in the media, not only in scientific reports, but also political, cultural, economic, ecological and meteorological stories as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScience is this really well worn pathway to knowing and learning and understanding climate change. And you know, we\u2019ve made a lot of great progress scientifically understanding the changing climate and humans\u2019 role in it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut science is just a part of the stories that are told increasingly in the media landscape.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boykoff and the team at MeCCO track the stories<\/a> coming out of news outlets and publish their analysis in monthly reports<\/a>. As of August 2019, coverage of climate change was up 83% around the world over a year ago. In the U.S., coverage has increased by 32% in that same time frame. Overall, Boykoff says, MeCCO has documented increasing coverage of climate change during the Trump administration, although not all of that coverage is positive. News reports of Trump\u2019s environmental rollbacks and skipping out on climate talks accounts for at least some of the spike. While any coverage that mentions the climate crisis raises awareness, Boykoff\u2019s research shows it\u2019s not all effective in actually creating change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his most recent book,\u00a0Creative (Climate) Communications<\/a><\/em>, Boykoff explores the effectiveness of certain storytelling techniques and ways of discussing climate change in the hopes that productive communication around the topic will lead to more constructive engagement.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on his research, Boykoff says the alarmist approach \u2014 \u201cfreaking people out\u201d \u2014 has proven to raise awareness but falls short of compelling action. Books like The Uninhabitable Earth<\/em> may sell well, he says, but they haven\u2019t proven useful in moving the needle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf your objective is to find common ground, move productively forward on confronting this issue, that\u2019s shown to consistently not be helpful,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, coverage of the 2018 U.N. IPCC report warning that we have 12 years to reverse course to avert the worst impacts of climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe report itself was very constructive,\u201d he says. \u201cMedia accounts of it, though, are a different story.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas the report detailed not only the severity of the climate situation but also actionable steps that will move us forward and bend the curve away from complete destruction, media reports were and continue to be more fatalistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting, appropriately, that we are in the middle of a climate crisis may be alarming, Boykoff says, but he makes a distinction between that and the alarmist approach which often leaves people feeling alienated and hopeless.  In fact, it may even lead to a sort of boomerang effect whereby people are overwhelmed by the enormity of the issue in such a way that paralyzes them from doing anything. This is where different communication strategies are key, Boykoff says \u2014 being authentic, accurate, trustworthy and aware of your audience is critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversations around climate change might be different if you\u2019re talking to a group of environmental activists or you\u2019re talking to hunting and fishing or more conservative communities, for example. But that doesn\u2019t make these conversations less effective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about smartening up the way that we discuss these things,\u201d Boykoff says. \u201cIt\u2019s not dumbing it down for the public, it\u2019s smartening up.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s about addressing the issue through a variety of avenues, including performance art, music, fine art and even comedy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou may not necessarily be into climate change or too preoccupied with the science, but if you\u2019re a fan of comedy, increasingly you might start to hear about these things through comedic acts,\u201d he says, citing examples like Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boykoff has been researching this specifically through his work with Inside the Greenhouse<\/a>, a project at CU Boulder that seeks to create interactive theater, film, fine art, performance art and television programming inspired by climate change. When it comes to comedy, Boykoff says, the results have been largely positive.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s lowered defenses,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s opened up kind of common ground for people to point out the incongruencies that we can then share and start to work on together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the public becomes more engaged on a variety of levels with the climate crisis, the hope is that we can start to reverse course and avert the worst possibilities of our current trajectory. According to Boykoff, the media plays a role in that, and if media continues to grow its coverage of climate change, hopefully in both quantity and quality, then we might just reach a level of saturation that actually makes a difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m less worried about fatigue than I am about not discussing it enough,\u201d Boykoff says. \u201cPut simply, the scale of our response to date is nowhere near commensurate to the scale of the challenge that we face. We have a ways to go on that.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was published as part of\u00a0Covering Climate Now<\/a>, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boulder Weeklyby Angela K. Evans The climate crisis has been making headlines recently, spurred by the worldwide youth climate strikes on Sept. 20 and U.N. Climate Summit on Sept. 23. Whether it\u2019s been Greta Thunberg chastising U.N. leaders over inaction … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-25 14:45:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3882,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions\/3882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}