Resource Type: Social Science Research

Environmental justice activists that work across a diverse set of issues rank climate justice among their highest priority issues. They overwhelmingly rely on base building, coalitions, and organizing strategies to do their work. In reflecting on the movement’s contemporary approaches, activists articulate the importance of shared frameworks such as climate justice to shift popular narratives and action on climate change. The climate justice frame reflects a critical, intersectional, and reconstructive conceptualization of the climate crisis that requires disrupting the status quo approaches to climate change. This study points to some of the challenges and opportunities ahead for realizing such a contentious and transformative climate justice vision led by EJ activists in a moment of expanding political opportunity and risk.

Communicators should highlight the negative impacts associated with fossil fuel extraction and global warming in order to persuade people who are confident in the economic security of fossil fuels. This survey of Canadians shows that the transition to cleaner forms of energy is broadly popular. Further, people who are more likely to favor the energy transition also worry more about climate change, identify on the political left or center, and have less hope in the future economic prospects of fossil fuels. Women, younger people, and higher-educated people also favor the transition away from oil and gas more. This article argues for political elites and other communicators to pay attention to the impacts that their messages can have on what masses of voters think about climate policy.

Non-climate global crises can distract people from the climate crisis. Given the immediacy and real-time affectedness of events like the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest, geopolitical tensions, and economic downturns, it’s easy to understand if attention was slipping away from the looming climate crisis. In an analysis of social media data, the authors of this article find that as other global threats loom large, climate change attention wanes. People engage significantly less with climate change related material as these other crises are introduced. Recognizing this reality, advocates should work towards impressing upon others that the climate crisis is indeed interconnected to these other events. “Systemic sustainability” or a unified message is key for keeping attention and focus on the climate threats, while also acknowledging and respecting the real impacts of these other events.

Establishing shared values between communicator and audience is essential for persuasive climate communication. When communicating about climate change, for any communicator, it’s essential to communicate that you have a shared goal as the audience—and to communicate that we (humans) still have agency in mitigating the problem. In addition, ideally describe some concrete actions that people can take. Too much past climate science communication has been purely dire and makes people feel hopeless and not efficacious to act. For businesses, proclaiming commitment to sustainability can be key for being more competitive—although greenwashing is always a concern when evaluating the intentions of corporations. This resource describes some competing climate communication frames, and the benefits and costs to each: “information deficit approach,” “motivation by fear approach,” “scientific framing approach,” and “media-based mobilization.”