Communicating Climate: A Conversation (with Naomi Oreskes, Lacy M. Johnson, Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe)

In this four-way dialogue among climate researchers in the humanities and social sciences we attempt to unravel various techniques of climate communication. In aiming to reach non-specialist audiences, we discuss keeping the narrative focused and how to overcome the bad news-ism of the climate crisis while acknowledging our collective and deep imbrication in it. We describe structural solutions that complement individual actions and the importance of conveying what is already being done, effectively and collectively, in the present. When we can make visible the work that is already going into addressing the climate crisis we are in another communicational mode: communication through acts that speak not just to the trouble, but to the importance of visualizing alternative futures too. We acknowledge that there is no magical formula for effective climate communication but that emotional, affective and action-oriented pathways are critical, and they raise questions about how we open ourselves to really feeling climate change. Our discussion grapples with the persistent future tense of normative climate discourse and we speculate on different media and modes of communication, including listening to nonhuman forces. Fire and water for instance—when they come to us in the form of wildfires, superstorms and flooding events—are, sadly, already excellent narrators of the climate crisis. Ultimately, we leave the conversation convinced that we need to balance out scientific abstraction with strategies for putting emotional content back into an issue that is fundamentally emotional. That is, how can we move from the emotions of grief and panic toward the emotions of conviction and purpose, energized by communicating collective and cooperative solutions.