2023-09-18 16:12:16
There is reason to feel good about it. In recent months, news about our disrupted climate has painted a picture of a bleak future.
This summer, Canada and Hawaii experienced the worst forest fires in their history. Severe heatwaves hit the United States, Spain, Iran, Morocco and even China. Greece was burned by flames, then immediately flooded by torrential rains. The North Atlantic is overheating, while Antarctica is melting faster than ever.
Added to this are the scientific reports, most of which document the fact that there is an emergency and that if nothing is done – if governments, industries, financial institutions and citizens do not act now – , The worse is yet to come.
This information comes to us over and over again from the media, politicians, environmentalists and scientists and inevitably undermines our morale.
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Flames destroyed part of the island of Rhodes, Greece, over the summer.
Photo : Archyde.com / Ted G. Bailos
Experts are measuring it today: this repeated portrait of a worrying future provokes a form of climate apathy among citizens. The picture is so dark that we have the impression that nothing is possible anymore. There is a disconnect: we feel that our grip on the problem is slipping through our hands, we withdraw into ourselves, we bury our heads in the sand.
This phenomenon is increasingly documented, notably thanks to the research of Norwegian psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, who published an important book on this issue in 2015 entitled What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (What we think about when we try not to think about global warming; this book is not translated).
If the threat of disaster is repeatedly repeated, people feel fear, guilt, or a combination of these two feelings. But these two emotions are passive. They cause people to tune out and avoid the topic rather than being interested in it.
This reality is increasingly observed in a growing number of Western countries.
Fatigue, avoidance and climate denial
The phenomenon of what we call in the jargon information fatigue and the avoidance of following this or that social issue is well documented.
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In the United States, Death Valley recorded a record temperature during the summer.
Photo : Getty Images / David McNew
The most recent annual survey from the Archyde.com Institute, the Digital News Report 2023 (New window), shows that a growing proportion of citizens are avoiding following the news. According to this large survey carried out in 46 countries located on all continents, with a sample of around 2,000 people per country, the data shows that 36% of people said they avoided, sometimes or often, following the news in 2022, compared to 29% in 2017.
Less than half of citizens (48%) say they are very or extremely interested in the news, compared to 63% in 2017. This is therefore a notable drop in interest, fueled by information fatigue.
This disinterest is marked, among other things, for the climate issue. In Finland, for example, where citizens are among the most interested in news in the world – that is to say, those least susceptible to information fatigue – almost a third of people who say they avoid the news say do so because of climate news.
In the United States, more than a third of people surveyed (35%) perceive information related to climate change as misinformation.
One of the consequences of information fatigue is precisely the growth of climate denial almost everywhere in the world.
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Tornadoes have been more frequent this summer in Canada.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Craig Boehm, SkStormChaser Photo
According to a major survey (New window) led by the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in France and published in December 2022, the responsibility of human activities in climate change is less and less recognized. This consultation made it possible to survey 24,001 respondents spread across all continents, at a rate of 500 to 1000 people per country.
The popularity of the idea that there is climate change, but it is not human-caused, has jumped five points globally, from 23% to 28% of people who agree with it. this affirmation.
The director of the study, Daniel Boy, of the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po, speaks of a form of collective astonishment.
The scale of the disaster is such that many people are in a state of astonishment. What then comes to mind is to say that nature has gone crazy.
How can we better talk about climate to avoid apathy?
In a democracy, information, whether it comes from the media, scientists or political leaders, allows us to better understand the world in which we live, to project ourselves into it and to make more informed choices.
However, information that feeds feelings of fear or guilt day after day confines us to helplessness, which opens the door to disengagement.
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Not a day goes by without the media reporting alarming news about the state of health of the planet.
Photo : getty images/istockphoto / Daniel Balakov
The reaction we have to such a crisis is directly linked to the emotion that the information received generates in us. If this emotion is only negative, if there is an absence of emotion because the information is too far from our reality, if we feel day after day that we have absolutely no control over the problem, then everything is in place for us to disengage from this issue.
This is where climate apathy kicks in.
How can scientists, the media and elected officials, each in their own way, talk about the climate crisis without causing a pushback?
Let us first take the case of information coming from scientists: reports, studies, interventions in the media, etc. The Norwegian Per Espen Stoknes offers the beginnings of a solution in an interview he gave this summer to the magazine Positive News.
One of the main mistakes of scientists has been to consider the mind as a bucket that only needs to be filled with facts to change behavior. As a psychologist, I have seen time and time again that this does not work. Simply knowing that the climate is in crisis is only the starting point for a process of change. This is not enough to achieve this, he explains.
It is precisely to improve the effectiveness and relevance of its communications that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put more effort in its latest report to describe possible solutions in order to effectively reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The media
The reasoning also applies to the media. The description of the facts no longer seems enough to arouse public interest in the climate issue. We have never been better informed than now in terms of scientific facts.
But we must go further than these facts. We must put the information in context, explain it better, find the right vocabulary and tone to adequately popularize often complex scientific facts.
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Climate change also brings its share of floods that journalists must cover.
Photo : Getty Images / BERTRAND GUAY
All of this, of course, is guided by our core journalistic principles: accuracy, balance, impartiality and integrity, among others. It is not a question of convincing but of better informing.
Radio-France, French public radio, proposed a turning point to its listeners in this regard regarding the coverage of climate issues.
We will contribute to making innovations and solutions known, from the most everyday individual behaviors to the most structuring economic changes, thus ensuring not to fuel climate discouragement but to give everyone the keys to understand, debate and act, affirms -She.
To properly initiate this turning point, the public broadcaster organized several conferences on various aspects of the climate internally for its professionals – journalists, producers, technicians, researchers, editors-in-chief, etc. –, presented by renowned scientists.
It is to move in this direction, to better put the information into context, that French public television followed suit by modifying its weather forecast, a widely followed segment of the daily newscast.
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The Radio-France offices in Paris.
Photo : Getty Images / MATTHIEU ALEXANDRE
The France 2 channel now offers a daily weather and climate bulletin which puts weather phenomena into context. We explain, then we allow viewers to ask questions, which scientists answer.
It allows you to have a real dialogue with people without scaring them, says Magali Reghezza-Zitt, doctor in geography and planning at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. This researcher, who until recently was a member of the High Council for the Climate in France, a committee of experts which advises the President of the Republic on this subject, has long been interested in methods of communication on climate issues.
Today, there are more than three million viewers who listen to the bulletin. Audiences are increasing all the time. We demonstrated that we could make something interesting by informing and showing solutions.
If citizens feel that they have lost their grip on the climate problem, it is perhaps partly because the information they receive is sometimes too detached from their reality.
People’s reality
To circumvent climate apathy, the narrative of the cover must necessarily offer stories that better embody people’s reality: describe how the climate affects communities, show why it destabilizes our lives, but also take the time to talk about ways to mitigate and adapt to problems.
It is also about giving more time and space to possible solutions, presenting them, explaining them, embodying them, but without putting on rose-colored glasses, by clearly describing their limits.
Making room for inspiring ideas and models that work and can be applied to our reality helps reduce the population’s feeling of powerlessness and citizens’ feeling of detachment.
Showing the human capacity for resilience and adaptation also has its virtues. On the other hand, we must also avoid focusing solely on what citizens must do, on individual solutions.
This is the worst mistake to make, says Magali Reghezza-Zitt. We must be very careful, because the individual gesture, the fact of changing our lifestyle and our daily behavior, only exists if, behind it, there are collective changes.
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The Félix-Leclerc highway (A-40) is the busiest sector in the Quebec region. Traffic jams in the morning and evening are almost systematic.
Photo : Radio-Canada
While we have a role to play and behaviors to change as citizens, we are not responsible for everything. We will be much more inclined to participate in change if we are shown that there are alternatives supported by the community.
We may be told a hundred times that we must abandon the private car, if citizens have the impression that we are not talking about other transport options in an equivalent manner, the intervention loses its meaning. We need to talk just as much – and perhaps more – about the lack of public investment in public transportation networks and cycling infrastructure throughout the territory.
If we don’t do this, if we fail to hold policy makers accountable for their collective choices, the information we receive makes us feel guilty. This feeling encourages us to detach ourselves from the problem.
The benefits of climate protection
Talking about solutions is not enough either. The other aspect of combating climate apathy is the need to talk about the benefits for citizens of protecting the climate, to make it clear to citizens that climate action is not only the the result of a series of personal sacrifices. Even if it is a little too.
The changes we make to protect the climate often improve people’s well-being and quality of life and we need to talk about it more, says geographer Magali Reghezza-Zitt.
It sets the example of appropriate investments in an efficient, comfortable and accessible public transport network over a large part of the territory, which reduces user stress, alleviates road congestion, costs less for households and improves the quality of transport. the air we breathe.
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Greening cities brings its share of benefits.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Steve Lawrence
Likewise, improving infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians improves the physical and mental health of citizens and reduces pressure on health systems.
Same phenomenon with the greening of cities and the protection of the territory: it is cooler, there are more accessible recreational spaces and the risk of flooding decreases because water is better absorbed by green spaces.
The hardest part is accepting that you won’t be able to put everything in place overnight, says Ms. Reghezza-Zitt. We must accept that we can make mistakes, know that we can go back and understand that choosing to do nothing is not the right solution, that it will have consequences for us and for our loved ones.
For both us citizens and political leaders, the climate issue can no longer be dealt with in isolation. For example, better maintenance of schools and investments in the quality of education will encourage parents to choose their local school, accessible on foot or by bike, rather than sending their children to one school in another. end of town.
The well-being of older people is partly linked to good urban planning and access to islands of fresh air. Access to affordable, quality food goes hand in hand with the well-being of our farmers, who directly depend on nature.
The climate is not a separate issue: we all have to live with it. We still need to talk about it better to understand it better and to feel it better.
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