Communicating Climate Change

When viewers’ values aligned with the particular frames in the videos, they reported liking the video, trusting the messenger in the video, and they registered higher rates of intending to take forest stewardship actions and actions to address climate change.

Three types of values, altruistic (focus on the welfare of other people), biospheric (focus on the welfare of the environment), and egoistic (focus on oneself)

Communication researchers have tied self-efficacy to climate change action. People feel a greater sense of self-efficacy and believe their actions will decrease climate change impacts if they receive messages that frame climate change in terms of what they gain from action versus what they lose from inaction

High minority participation in community gardening and environmental justice organizations28 points to possibilities for building stronger and more diverse coalitions around climate change.

large body of climate change communication research focuses on understanding public attitudes toward climate change and on experimenting with the ways in which communication affects attitudes.

n a study examining climate change knowledge across the United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, China, and the United Kingdom, higher levels of knowledge about the causes of climate change (but not the physical characteristics of climate change) were associated with higher levels of climate change concern.1

but fewer Americans understand how the greenhouse effect works, and many continue to conflate ozone layer depletion with climate chang

To ignore clear evidence and fail to act, creating great peril for the near- and long-term future, is beyond a scientific, technological, or political issue; it is a question of morality, ethics, sanity, and self-preservation.

nvironmental educators need to expand their efforts to get students, families, and neighbors working together to address climate change.33 Further, environmental educators can help people influence business and government policies.

Two broad strategies for mitigating climate change are (1) reducing greenhouse gas emissions (for example, by converting from coal to solar for electricity generation), and (2) increasing sequestration of CO2 that has already been emitted (for example, by planting trees).