It’s time to change how we talk about climate change
ALANNAH NATHAN: The freakish weather Texas experienced last week offered the state a taste of how serious climate disaster really is. No sooner, of course, than twenty-four hours after the first power outages were Republican lawmakers using the incident to score political points, claiming among other false narratives that the Green New Deal would be deadly, climate change is a hoax and natural gas and fossil fuels are needed now more than ever. What’s I saw as most concerning about Texas was not the disaster itself but what it revealed about the state of our highly politicized climate rhetoric. If we want to avoid disaster, it’s time we change the way we talk about climate change (particularly in the political arena).
We have access to the scientific evidence of what is needed to mitigate climate change and what will happen should we not live up to the task. What we lack is not the tools to lessen global warming but a narrative to inspire the collective willingness to use them. If the United States’ response to the pandemic is any indication of how we will continue to respond to climate disaster, there’s certainly a lot to be learned.
Much like the COVID-19 crisis, climate change mitigation is best informed by science; yet, no matter the outpour of scientific data and concrete evidence to the American public, it has been insufficient in motivating adequate behavior change towards either crisis. Studies show that as the data indicating the threat of climate change accumulates, the public has become less concerned, not more. Safe to say, persuasion through scientific evidence is limited, if not counterproductive. The response to the pandemic has confirmed any wavering doubts.
Moreover, the U.S.’s response to COVID-19 demonstrates that proximity to a crisis is not in and of itself an assured driver of habit change. While many Americans have been highly responsive to the threat of COVID-19, provoked by an imminent sense of danger, others have not. Common rhetoric argues that as climate change worsens and the effects become increasingly visible, behavior changes will quickly follow suit. The U.S. COVID-19 response suggests otherwise. Republican Texan lawmakers haven’t exactly been rushing to change their policy now that they’ve seen climate change “with their own eyes.”
If scientific evidence and even personal proximity to a crisis are limited incentives for behavior change, what can work? Some may look at the COVID-19 response with despair as they imagine how we might respond to an environment in peril with consequences far direr than the virus; however, I believe that should we take the following lesson seriously, there’s cause for optimism.
The lesson begins with a survey from March 2020. When asked what concerned them most in the wake of the virus outbreak, more Americans reported it was the health of the U.S. economy (70%) than their health (27%). The survey demonstrates that people don’t just care about the economy a little. They care about it more than their well-being. Thus, the well-known narrative of climate change starring stranded polar bears, bleached coral reefs and even human death have to change. Until that story includes the health of the economy in a leading role, convincing more than 41% of Americans to see climate change as a major threat may only be in vain.
A new, post-pandemic story replaces stranded polar bears with the knowledge of tens of trillions of dollars to be saved in the next century should climate strategies be adopted. It swaps stories of bleached coral reefs with the potential for 65 million net new jobs worldwide with a clean energy transition. It rejects apocalyptic stories of faraway people in faraway times, emphasizing with an the $95 billion largely avoidable economic damage the U.S. suffered in 2020 in face of hurricanes, wildfires, and draughts. It reads not like the 80% of negative climate articles adopting a doom-and-gloom tone but offers a vision for American economic opportunity. And most importantly, it’s not skewed right or left, red or blue; it’s intended for all Americans, regardless of political orientation.
If Americans are wary of the small sacrifice of wearing a mask, there’s little hope for giving up driving a car, eating less meat, or switching off the A.C., putting the need for a top-down solution in which the government and large businesses pave the way. Climate change’s “vaccine,” so to speak, is a full switch to renewable energy sources. However, before the tools can be put in place to mitigate climate change, Americans have to be ready to take the shot. This requires a new framing of climate change that prioritizes not an overload of scientific evidence nor sacrifices or false hope but the benefits of a greener economy – one that at least 70% of Americans should be highly concerned about. Until we shift how we frame climate change, incidents like those in Texas will only become increasingly normal.
Alannah Nathan is a freshman in the School of Foreign Service and a New Yorker by way of Seattle. She is a prospective STIA major and hopes to guide the future of climate change policy in the international arena.