Resources

International Public Opinion on Climate Change, 2023

Publication year: 2023
Organization: Yale Program on Climate Change Communications and partner organizations
Link
Post category:Audience Insights

This latest survey from the Yale team investigates climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior among Facebook users in nearly 190 countries and territories worldwide. It finds generally high levels of climate change awareness among respondents in the developed world. In contrast, more than half of respondents from multiple countries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East, and island states say they know little to nothing about climate change. The results indicate there is still a critical need for basic climate change communication worldwide, especially in the world’s most vulnerable countries and populations.

Slip, slap, sloppy: Squillions spent on public education, but not on our most pressing threat

Publication year: 2024
Media: The Sydney Morning Herald
Link
Post category:Articles

Large-scale public awareness campaigns are routinely used by governments to change public behaviour and protect our health. They remind us to stop littering or speeding, and have encouraged us to get our booster shots, do our tax or look out for would-be terrorists. In the face of global warming, heatwaves and extreme weather events, where is the campaign with advice on how to stay cool as temperatures rise, reduce meat consumption etc?

World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot

Publication year: 2023
Journal: Science Progress
Authors: Merz JJ, Barnard P, Rees WE, Smith D, Maroni M, Rhodes CJ, Dederer JH, Bajaj N, Joy MK, Wiedmann T, Sutherland R
Link
Post category:Academic Papers

This paper explores the behavioural drivers of ecological overshoot, providing evidence that overshoot is itself a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour. Aurhors explore three drivers of the behavioural crisis in depth: economic growth; marketing; and pronatalism. These three drivers directly impact the three ‘levers’ of overshoot: consumption, waste and population. In the final sections of this paper, tbeg propose an interdisciplinary emergency response to the behavioural crisis by, amongst other things, the shifting of social norms relating to reproduction, consumption and waste.

Climate Change in the Indonesian Mind

Publication year: 2023
Organization: Yale Program on Climate Change Communications and partner organizations
Link
Post category:Audience Insights

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey of 3,490 individuals in Indonesia (aged 16 years and above).The full report includes insights on global warming awareness and beliefs, perceived risks of global warming and deforestation, environmental activism and Indonesians’ environmental norms, values, and efficacy.

The visuals of today help create the reality of tomorrow:’ Why Hollywood is finally tackling climate change onscreen

Publication year: 2023
Media: Fast Company
Link
Post category:Articles

Fictional on-screen stories on climate over the past three decades have been rare, and when they’ve existed at all, they’ve been apocalyptic. Some of that has started to shift in recent years, due to a changing zeitgeist and organized efforts from inside and outside the industry, but the transition has been slow to materialize.

Communicating for Environment and Climate Policy

Organization: Australian National University
Link
Post category:Courses

By unpacking the complex (but fascinating) social and institutional dimensions of communication, the course will uncover what works - and what doesn't - for environment and climate policy. Across all topics, the course integrates the cross-cutting 4 P's: power, public opinion, the public sphere, and policy windows.

Climate Communications: from Principles to Practice

Organization: Simon Braiser University
Link
Post category:Courses

This six-week course introduces the foundations of climate change communication and explores practices that break through persistent barriers to effectively talk about climate action with different audiences to motivate behaviour change. You will learn about narratives and storytelling, countering misinformation, and how to engage in climate conversations.

Hopium or empowering hope? A meta-analysis of hope and climate engagement

Publication year: 2023
Journal: Frontiers in Psychology
Authors: Nathaniel Geiger, Timothy Dwyer, Janet K. Swim
Link
Post category:Academic Papers

This review study found “partial yet inconclusive evidence” that increasing hope makes people engage more with the climate. It found people whose hope was rooted in complacency were less likely to engage than those whose hope was linked to action.

The strength and content of climate anger

Publication year: 2023
Journal: Global Environmental Change
Authors: Thea Gregersen, Gisle Andersen, Endre Tvinnereim
Link
Post category:Academic Papers

This study, which asked 2,000 Norwegian adults how they felt about the climate crisis, found the link to activism was seven times stronger for anger than it was for hope. The effects were smaller for other actions, but fear and guilt were the best predictors of policy support, while sadness, fear and hope were the best predictors of behavioural change.

The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers

Publication year: 2018
Journal: Environmental Humanities
Authors: Matthew Schneider-Mayerson
Link
Post category:Academic Papers

This paper questions the widely assumed idea that climate fiction has a positive ecopolitical influence by enabling readers to imagine potential climate futures and persuading them of the gravity and urgency of climate change. It also demonstrates a novel interdisciplinary approach to environmental literature (empirical ecocriticism) and points the way to future research in this vein.