How we can avoid polarization in conversations around climate solutions

In the scientific community, the consensus on human-caused global warming is almost universal — a recent study from Environmental Research Letters found that more than 99 percent of peer-reviewed papers agreed that humans are causing global warming and climate change. However, among Americans, the belief in anthropogenic climate change is not nearly as strong, with a recent Associated Press (AP) poll showing that only 54 percent of Americans who believe climate change is happening believe it is caused mostly or entirely by humans, with another 32 percent saying they believe it is a mix of human and natural causes. The political polarization of climate change was also stark in the AP poll, with 89 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans stating that they believe climate change is happening. A paper published in the journal Environmental Communication in 2019 suggests we should learn from the previous communication around climate change to help avoid polarization as scientists move towards suggesting solutions for climate change.

Negative emissions technologies, methods that remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, could become polarized in the public sphere in the same way that climate change has become polarized.

In the paper, the authors argue that communication around climate solutions should avoid some key factors that polarized the discussion around climate change. Specifically, they point to negative emissions technologies as a climate solution that has garnered recent academic and political attention, and it’s one that could benefit from a reframing to avoid polarization. Negative emissions technologies are methods that remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, such as carbon capture, planting new forests, and ocean fertilization (adding nutrients to the ocean to encourage algae growth). According to the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, negative emissions technologies will be necessary to reach their recommendation of limiting global warming to 1.5°C; however, the research and implementation of negative emissions technologies are still very new, and public awareness of these technologies is low. The authors of the paper contend that there is a risk that negative emissions technologies could become polarized in the public sphere in the same way that climate change has become polarized, which would result in a public focused on affirming preexisting beliefs and biases as opposed to supporting solutions. 

The authors of the Environmental Communication paper outline three main ways that communication around negative emissions technologies can avoid polarization. First, they advise avoiding ideological bundling, which is when attitudes around an unrelated issue color attitudes towards another issue. In some societies, especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, taking action on climate change is bundled in with the political left and “progressive” agendas, causing citizens’ attitudes to be influenced not by evidence on the topic but by whether their political ideology is “pro” or “anti” that topic. To avoid this bundling when discussing negative emissions technologies, the authors suggest not aligning the new technologies with climate change, but rather embracing that negative emissions technologies can be beneficial in ways that speak to many different political ideologies. Second, the authors recommend choosing communication frames carefully. Typically, climate change is framed as “environment versus economy,” presenting climate action as antithetical to economic prosperity, when research shows that framing various climate action scenarios as gains, rather than losses, is more likely to generate support for climate policy. The authors argue that discourse around negative emissions technologies should avoid terms such as geoengineering, which has a negative moral framing, and focus on the technologies as additions to reducing emissions, which is what climate scientists say is needed to limit climate change. Lastly, the authors argue that information about negative emissions technologies should be delivered from a variety of non-partisan, trusted messengers from different media sources to avoid aligning the technologies with any political agenda.

Research shows that framing various climate action scenarios as gains, rather than losses, is more likely to generate support for climate policy.

As climate research in the public discourse becomes less about whether climate change is occurring and moves towards the development of strategies to mitigate its effects, communication around the solutions to climate change will become increasingly important. In order to reach no more than 1.5°C of global warming, it will be critical to avoid tying the solutions such as negative emissions technologies to the already polarized issue of climate change.

Environmental Research Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
Environmental Communication (2019). DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2019.1630463