Webinar on Climate Change Communication

For my final climate change communication project, I decided to host a webinar on basic principles of climate change communication. Since this topic has become so heavily polarized, it’s apparent that we need to communicate more effectively about it. The information I’ve learned in this class is so valuable, and I wanted to share it with an audience that would also find it useful. I coordinated with the U.S. Climate Strike Coalition to host my webinar on the Social Community Series. This group has a compilation of online events, the purpose of which is to share and learn from one another during this unprecedented time. In my webinar, I included a presentation about important concepts of climate communication, a discussion, and a Q&A led by Professor Huxster and myself. 

I began creating the presentation by narrowing down what concepts I thought would be most useful for this group of activists, keeping in mind I wanted to put it in a concise format of about 20 minutes. I started with an overview of the article, “Public Understanding of Climate Change in the United States,” by Elke Weber and Paul Stern, discussing the political polarization surrounding climate change and the misinformation campaigns funded by the fossil fuel industry.

I realized that it would be necessary to delve a little deeper to provide some background before jumping into barriers and solutions to climate communication. So, I created a slide addressing the psychological factors to consider when discussing climate change, i.e. the fact that it is often framed as distant in time and space, making the issue feel non-urgent. I also added some information about the “Six Americas,” or the six categories of attitudes towards climate change in the United States. Overall, most of the information I shared was from concepts discussed in “What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming” by Per Espen Stoknes. I wrapped up my presentation by explaining the main barriers to climate change communication and some solutions to those barriers. 

To make the webinar interactive, I included questions to be discussed in breakout rooms. As there were some technical difficulties when I did the webinar, the host did not have the ability to do breakout rooms. So, I simply asked people to answer or star in the chat if they wanted to speak. The discussion transitioned to a lively Q&A when people began asking questions in the chat. There were so many questions that we unfortunately couldn’t get to everyone’s, but it was exciting to see that many people engaged in this topic. I was pleasantly surprised to find that 44 people attended the webinar - more than I was expecting.

I concluded the webinar with a list of resources people could look into for further information on the topic. I included: Stoknes’ book, Weber and Stern’s article, the film Merchants of Doubt, and my classmate Ellie’s website. Someone asked for our contact information, so I put my email in the chat and received several messages after the webinar asking for more resources. I was grateful to find that people seemed to engage with this webinar, and I feel that I was able to share some of the valuable principles I’ve learned in this class with a wider audience.

References
"Exxon has misled Americans on climate change for decades. Here's how to fight back." The Guardian, 23 Oct. 2019, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/23/exxon-climate-change-fossil-fuels-disinformation.
Foden, Ellie. "Your climate and world is changing." Your Earth, erfoden.wixsite.com/yourclimate.
"Global Warming's Six Americas." Yale program on Climate Change Communication, climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/.
Merchants of Doubt. Directed by Robert Kenner, 2014.
Stoknes, Per Espen. What we think about when we try not to think about Global Warming. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015.
Weber, Elke U., and Paul C. Stern. "Public Understanding of Climate Change in the United States." American Psychologist, vol. 66, no. 4, 2011.