I’ll start with a chart:
It appears that fewer Americans are concerned about climate change today than they were in the 1990s. Didn’t they get the memo that climate change has now become a climate crisis? Yeah, they did - and it made no difference. To elaborate…
Flanagin & Metzger (2007) The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information.
People tend to discount information from sources with obvious persuasive intent.... [messages] where explicit persuasive intent may be present are subject to lower credibility assessments, perhaps as a result of higher scrutiny or skepticism.
Why Don’t They Like Us? Climate Change Skeptics and their Discontents; Exploring the Problem Space.. August 15, 2016.
Dire messaging about climate change, especially when delivered with a tone of certainty that exceeds the science, can backfire. Subjecting skeptics to vividly catastrophic climate scenarios won’t work – and might even increase their skepticism. When there’s already a degree of mistrust, arguing on the basis of authority (the “consensus”) or relying on fear tactics increases distrust.
Explicit Persuasive Intent and Concerned Scientists. Exploring the Problem Space. November 15,2017
Want to convince someone the situation is urgent and immediate action is imperative? Well, you're not going to get very far by laying it on with a sledgehammer. This approach usually backfires by triggering resistance and motivating counterarguments. Repeating the same message with an increasing sense of alarm isn't going to help either. As a voluminous academic literature has already shown, the frequency of persuasive messages is inversely related to their effectiveness at influencing behavior. In the context of getting people to do what you want, that means if at first, you don't succeed, try try again is a tactic that reaps diminishing returns.
Feldman & Hart (2021) Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news.
News organizations increasingly use the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” to convey the urgency of climate change; yet, little is known about how this terminology affects news audiences. This study experimentally examined how using “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” or “climate change” in Twitter-based news stories influences public engagement with climate change and news perceptions...Results showed no effect of terminology on climate change engagement; however, “climate emergency” reduced perceived news credibility and newsworthiness compared to “climate change.” … No interactions with political ideology were found.
Goldwert et al (2024) Climate change terminology does not influence willingness to take climate action.
We tested the differential effect of 10 frequently used terms (i.e., “climate change”, “climate crisis”, “global warming”, “global heating”, “climate emergency”, “carbon pollution”, “carbon emissions”, “greenhouse gasses”, “greenhouse effect”, “global boiling”). Despite high willingness to engage in climate action (74% in Experiment 1 and 57% in Experiment 2), the terms had no impact on intentions to act…This pattern of null results was robust across a wide variety of populations (including age, gender, political ideology, socioeconomic status, and education level), as well as across numerous psychological and cultural variables…indicating that focusing on subtle terminology in climate messaging is not an effective use of resources.
Behind the Headlines/The Fourth National Climate Assessment, Part IV: Adaptation; Exploring the Problem Space. December 1, 2018
Fearmongering doesn’t help the greater cause of combating climate change. In fact, fearmongering can backfire by further alienating skeptics (who see right through the exaggerations) and triggering unproductive despair in others. Plus, you don’t motivate people by screaming the world is going to end unless we take radical action now. You motivate people by generating doable ideas about how to make things better.
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Links:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx
References:
Feldman, L., Hart, P.S. Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news. Climatic Change 169, 10 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03219-5
Flanagin, A. J. and M. J. Metzger (2007). "The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information." New Media & Society 9(2): 319-342
Goldwert, Danielle, Kimberly C. Doell, Jay J. Van Bavel, and Madalina Vlasceanu. "Climate change terminology does not influence willingness to take climate action." Journal of Environmental Psychology 100 (2024): 102482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102482