海角大神

The news this week about the Earth鈥檚 future has been, for the most part, grim.

On Monday, the United Nations鈥� Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first analysis of climate science in nearly a decade, declaring its findings a 鈥渃ode red for humanity.鈥� The group, made up of hundreds of international scientists reviewing tens of thousands of published reports, found that this past decade was the hottest in 125,000 years. Glaciers are melting faster than at any time in the past 2,000 years, atmospheric levels of carbon are the highest in at least 2 million years, and the rate of ocean level rise has nearly doubled since 2006, the scientists wrote.

News organizations, which had been anticipating the dire forecast, echoed the U.N.鈥檚 alarm. 鈥淣owhere to run,鈥� declared The Associated Press. 鈥淎 Hotter Future Is Certain,鈥� said The New York Times. 鈥淣o good news here,鈥� wrote the Agence France-Presse.

But for those whose job it is to raise awareness about climate change, there was another crucial point in the IPCC report: There is still time to do something about climate change.

That鈥檚 a message scientists have been increasingly trying to communicate as the public discourse shifts from a debate over whether climate change is happening toward a conversation about what to do about it.

For years, explains Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and co-founder of the blog RealClimate, the main effort around climate change communication was to convince doubters that the Earth was, indeed, getting warmer. But over the past decade, as the real-time effects of climate change have become more apparent, the number of climate change deniers in the United States has decreased, and the number of individuals alarmed about climate change has skyrocketed.聽

According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 72% of the U.S. population in 2020 believed that 鈥済lobal warming is happening,鈥� and the 鈥渁larmed鈥� segment of the population grew by more than 50% between 2015 and 2020, from 17% to 26%.聽

鈥淲e spent a good 20 years trying to convince the inconvincible, trying to use science and reason,鈥� Dr. Schmidt says. 鈥淚t turns out that things happening to you or people you know is more convincing.鈥�

Finding the right balance in messaging

But this shift has left scientists with a new communications dilemma: how to convey the urgency of climate change without making the situation seem so terrible, or so hopeless, that people disconnect from the problem altogether.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e trying to avoid is this idea of petrification, where it seems too bad and impossible to overcome,鈥� says Daniel Bresette, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a nonprofit education and policy group that works with lawmakers to create climate-smart policies. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot we have the ability to do,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a matter of focusing on the sort of things that we can do to make things better, and avoiding doing things that can make it worse.鈥�

A report like the IPCC鈥檚 this week can create significant anxiety, points out Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine who also hosts the 鈥淲arm Regards鈥� podcast about climate change.

鈥淪ome recent work shows that some amount of alarm is good and necessary,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what can get people off of the couch and doing the sorts of things that we need to be doing to make a difference here.鈥�

But there is also a risk that with too much bad news, and not enough guidance about how to respond to it, individuals can begin to feel powerless.聽

鈥淭hat feeling of helplessness can cause people to shut down; it can cause people to disengage,鈥� says Dr. Gill. 鈥淲hat we need is for people to feel some sense of agency so that they can still show up.鈥�

The reaction to climate analyses like the IPCC鈥檚 report doesn鈥檛 have to be either complete despair or shrug-it-off dismissal, she says.聽

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of space between total civilization collapse 鈥� and everything is hunky-dory,鈥� Dr. Gill adds.

Focusing on solutions聽

That in-between place is important, says Joellen Russell, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies the ocean鈥檚 role in climate and who recently co-founded an initiative called Science Moms to motivate other mothers to work for climate action.聽 聽

Parents recognize the changing weather, Dr. Russell says. They are, like her, worried about letting their kids go out to play in yet another record-breaking summer heat wave. Many are also increasingly distraught about the climate-altered future their children will inherit if the world does not make changes.

Science Moms, a collaboration of female climate scientists, works to 鈥渉elp them raise their voices and put their outrage where they can make a difference,鈥� Dr. Russell says.聽

Mothers, she says, have regularly dug in and demanded social change where it was hard. Now, she says, it鈥檚 time for them to act with urgency and demand that everyone 鈥撀爄ndividuals, policymakers, country representatives 鈥� moves faster.

This isn鈥檛 a pie-in-the-sky approach, she points out. There is evidence that both individual and group action can make an impact on climate change. The United States, she says, has reduced carbon emissions by 20% since 2007.

鈥淭here are all these amazing human beings, and companies, making wise decisions to save a buck and save the planet,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut we need to move faster.鈥�

That is also a takeaway of the IPCC report.聽

Actions today, scientists wrote, can mean the difference between the catastrophic effects of 4 degrees of global warming, such as dramatically increased flooding, deadly heat waves, and food shortages, and a still hot, but less devastating, temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the target put forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That鈥檚 not to say the situation isn鈥檛 alarming, says Dr. Schmidt from NASA. It is, and scientists need to convey that reality.聽聽

But now it is also time to personalize the message.

鈥淚 give a lot of public talks, and literally the No. 1 question that I鈥檓 asked is, 鈥榃hat do I do and how do I do it?鈥欌�� says Dr. Schmidt.

鈥淚 say that you, as an individual, wear many hats. You鈥檙e a consumer, you鈥檙e also a parent, you are a member of a faith community, you go on a march and you go to Congress and you make your voice heard; you talk about it with your friends and family,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can influence decisions not just in your household but in your city and state and country; you can elevate your voice enough that you and the others you鈥檝e influenced impact those big decisions that will really make a difference.鈥�