Do we owe people the truth about climate change?
How to navigate the murky waters of climate change conversations.
No audio recording today, I’ve got a bug and it hurts to talk. But if you would like to hear me speak, check out the recording of a recent talk I did about intergenerational collaboration in tackling the climate crisis.
I’ve always been a strong believer that we must end climate news reports with a strong dollop of hope. To reinforce the reports with actionable steps on what can be done next.
However, I’ve begun to wonder if by doing so, we’re allowing both the author and the reader to bypass the reality of climate change, offering false hope.
The questions that have been pinging around in my head recently include: How do we tell people the truth? How can we tell people the truth? Do we even tell them the truth? How do we promote hopefulness whilst being truthful? And many, many more.
Thankfully, I’m part of an incredible community here on Substack, so I asked your thoughts on this question, and you all came armed with such incredible advice. I have woven your ideas into this article so we can all come away with some well-rounded thoughts and best practices for future conversations.
Myself, I’m not a complete doomer, though my levels of hopefulness vary. I’m currently of the belief that we’ll–hopefully–come out of this crisis with minor (to moderate) bruising. I don’t expect the world of business as usual to go on and, ultimately, I believe a more hands-on, community-focused world will be better for us all.
My realisation that the reality of climate change is, perhaps, worse than we are told came slowly. I didn’t have a world-altering interaction with someone who told me the scary truth, my understanding of the crisis came bit by bit, through books and conversations, and now I almost feel as if the truth is always there, has always been there.
The truth is now an amorphous figure to the edge of my peripheral vision, always there ready to remind me if I forget–however much I try to forget.
You can see that I’m already tip-toeing, I don’t know where people find themselves in their discovery and subsequent grieving journey, and I would hate for someone to come away from my writings feeling the gut-wrenching, world-ending Climate Fear I’ve felt so many times myself.
So let’s explore this delicately, and see where we end up.
“I think truth has to be there, otherwise we are adding to the haze of misinformation and pseudoscience, however unintentionally. However, like all medicines, dosage is key: just as you wouldn’t pour a whole bottle of medicine down someone’s throat, so, too, must the communication of truth be managed in a way that is more productive than destructive. Some see messages of hope as “false hope”, but these are clearly not the same. The key to effective communication lies in modelling the ability to hold both simultaneously: the truth of the situation, AND the reasons for hope. Because they are there. And the doomism tips too far in the other direction sometimes. More and more the key seems to be supporting each other as we tip in and out of feelings of hope and hopelessness. It’s impossible not to feel hopeless sometimes. But we can support each other to keep going. Holding the truth simultaneously with stories of hope is just one way of doing that.” –
fromI believe the first consideration should be, do people actually want to hear about it?
You’ve signed up to read my writing so I can assume you’re interested in climate change talk, but the person sitting next to me at a dinner party? A cousin at a family event? Your hairdresser?
To me, it feels like there's a time and a place for these conversations, and we owe it to others to try to understand whether the person is open to hearing about it at that moment before we open our mouths.
Sure, it's a very, very important conversation to be had. Sure, people need to be more educated on the ever-looming, ever-increasing issues that will change our entire world. Yet, talking about it with no forethought feels like handing someone a ticking time bomb and saying “Have fun with that!” and walking away as it explodes behind us. Not cool.
We also need to consider the psychology here. Your brain won’t compute information like this immediately. It can’t! How are any of us meant to understand warming climates and melting icebergs whilst we’re sitting in our well-tempered and dry houses? Randomly dumping information on people will just leave them confused, and potentially close them off to the issue further.
And, let’s be real, no one wants to be friends with the person who's always bringing up climate change–sorry!
“I recently did an interview with writer and researcher Sarah Jaquette Ray about climate anxiety and smth she said that really stuck with me: truth matters perhaps /less/ than story, bc story shapes our behavior and what we think is possible and therefore our future. SJR: “I like to say, “Which story does the planet need you to live in?” If you really care about the planet, which story does it want you to live in?” i do think its slightly different from the question you’re asking, but i think its related--blind hope or toxic positivity, especially about the current state of things, is probably counter-productive, but we probably do need more of what christiana figueres calls “stubborn optimism” about the future and how we turn the present into that future!” - Mia from
What’s the point in even saying it?
If we know fear demobilises people, are we being helpful by telling them the truth? If we know no one wants to hear about it, are we making our potentially shortened lives even worse by scaring people with these truths?
Who am I to decide what other people can or can’t handle? Who am I to freely deliver the horrible, horrible truths of the world just because I stumbled across a certain article?
Here’s the thing, even speaking to my loved ones who do want to hear about it, the look on their face when I tell them something doomy hurts my heart. How exactly do I say “Hey friend, I just read an article that says the ice sheets are melting faster than ever thought possible, and it looks like thousands will drown! Isn’t that crazy?” and not feel like an awful person when I see them try to hide the anxiety in their eyes and swallow the lump in their throat?
Should we just pretend life is normal and continue living the only way we know how? Or are we missing the chance to reduce the effects of climate change by stopping the things we know are causing it? Can we even reduce the effects of climate change when baked-in climate emissions will blow us past climate targets anyway?! Have I just told you something you didn’t know and didn’t want to hear?!
Did the dinosaurs know the asteroid was coming? Would they have wanted to know?
“I have a book coming out on this subject in May 2024 "Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart." The chapter I deal most directly with your question is entitled "Hope is Complicated." I suggest (among other things) that the emphasis on hope is based on the first of three main approaches to ethics: outcome-based ethics, as distinguished from rule-based and identity-based ethcs. In other words, we are typically motivated to act by likelihood of outcome, by a rule or law, or by a conviction that action is required because of who we are or want to be. I think many of us reach a point where we feel we are pretending that desirable outcomes are likely ... and it is draining and dishonest to pretend. But that doesn't mean we surrender to despair, inaction, and resignation. It means that we switch from outcome-based motivation to identity-based motivation. That is what has sustained me: I act not because I think a hopeful outcome is likely, but because I love the Earth and its creatures (including present and future humans), and so I keep in the struggle sustained by love, whatever the outcome. As Mia said above, this shifts the emphasis to my personal choice of a story I want to live in ... facing all the available facts (including the fact that I can't know all the facts), and remaining motivated to save all that can be saved because of who I have chosen to be.” –
What is their version of the truth? What is the version of the truth?
If we’re considering whether we tell people the truth about the climate crisis, what version of the truth are we talking about telling them?
I say the version of the truth because I don’t believe there is any one truth. It may be true to me and you that climate change is a real thing, but is your truth green-tinted business-as-usual or all-out climate catastrophe?
We could say we trust the truth of the IPCC reports, but some researchers believe these reports are simplified and based on “guesstimations” with dramatically important information left out of their predictions. So what truth do we settle on?
Should we tell people the most hopeful version of the truth? Do we all become amateur improv-ists and sprinkle a “Yes, and?!” onto the end of the truth? Yes, temperatures are rising, and we’re doing something about it!
Ultimately does our agreeing on the ‘truth’ even matter? If I’m a climate denier, and you’re a collapse theorist, but we both agree that the sea is full of plastic and needs to be saved, then that doesn’t stop us from working together, from talking about the issues, or from doing anything about it.
“Shouldn't we always end our articles with a note about keeping up the fight, taking action, every kg of CO2 not emitted, every little sustainable act is a little less harm to us all and our descendants?” –
What do we owe people when we say it?
Perhaps you’ve figured out your friend wants to hear about climate change, you’ve decided it’s a worthwhile thing to talk about, and you feel they will comfortably share your version of the truth without falling face-first into a pit of doom.
So, you decide you’re gonna say it. You’re gonna say it! You’re gonna spill the truth and connect with your friend on a deeper level. Be warned, once you tell someone the dire news, you now have the ethical responsibility to carry them through it.
I feel there are two paths to take when we want to tell this news.
If you’re a solutionist, if you find comfort in solutions, buttress the news with a realistic solution. Foster resilience, and invoke a sense of human agency. Just please make these solutions realistic, like encouraging your informee to take part in community activism or reduce their food waste. (This is a great list of real household actions.) It’s not comforting to be told an Elon Musk-type will come up with a clever carbon capture technology that will save us all.
If you don’t feel you can rely on a solutions framework–me neither–then you need to figure out a way to help them live with the impossible. Perhaps you have a story to offer them or a grief group they can come to be held. Try to offer them the pastoral care necessary to see them through it, and let them know you’re there for them.
None of this is to say you need to match certain criteria to finally be able to talk about climate change. But please, pick your moments. No, your colleague’s leaving drinks isn’t the best time to do so, nor is your niece’s 3rd birthday party.
None of us really want to deliver this news to other people, but now we’ve heard it ourselves, it's our duty to spread the message, Let’s just do it(!) with(!) care(!). You might need to tell someone once, you might need to tell ‘em 5 times before they comprehend it, but if we must do it, we must do it right.
Consider how you’d like to hear such intense news, read the room carefully, and try to deliver it with a similar sense of care and delicacy.
“I believe that we have to not get into despair and keep our motivation up to actually make change. Sometimes, that involves not sugarcoating the truth and fully feeling grief. Sometimes, that could involve creating a bridge out of bad news for the reader. It's the function of wisdom to tell us when to turn up the positivity dial and by how much. Also, I wrote a post on my newsletter reflecting on The book of Hope by Jane Goodall if you're interested in checking that out.” –
fromWhat about in the online world?
When it’s a one-to-one situation, it’s easier to read the room, read your friends’ faces, and understand the kind of care they need. But once we take the information into digital spaces the lines get blurred and many of us lose our manners.
With news publications, scarily titled articles are thrust in front of our eyes telling us the ‘cold, hard facts’ without much positivity or hope at all. However, I don’t believe these news sites are telling us the truth either, because these articles are nestled next to articles about the best Amazon Prime deals and advertisements for foreign holidays. It feels like they’re saying to us “Yeah it’s fucked, no you can’t do anything about it, but here, wanna buy stuff you don’t need and make it all worse?”.
For the average social media poster, or writers on a publication like Substack, I believe it’s unethical to drop the truth bomb and leave. Though most of us are doing better than major news sites, this brings me back to my original question, by offering these ‘solutions’, are we offering false hope?
Unfortunately, it’s not a yes or no answer.
I believe that there must be a balance. It’s a complete lie to tell people that if they simply swapped to an electric car, brought their tote bags to the supermarket, and tried meatless Mondays then we’ll pull ourselves out of this crisis.
I think any offering of business as usual with a few changes is dishonesty, the action we need to take for the climate crisis will be a life-altering and world-changing shift. The reality is that we won’t be able to consume anywhere near as much as we do, and we won’t be able to take foreign holidays every year.
Many, many people are going to be displaced due to catastrophe and we’re all going to have to get our hands dirty to help out.
But, does this mean we should offer no advice at all, and leave people sitting with doom? You guessed it–no!
Instead of offering these save-the-world lists at the end, can we offer something more real? Something that will guide people along their journey of realisation? Think the Deep Adaptation forum, the Work That Reconnects network, or the Active Hope training.
This is in no way a comprehensive guide to discussing the climate crisis, but I like to think I’ve provided a few ideas for you to consider next time you’re trying to walk the thin line of a climate conversation.
We’ve got to be able to keep the balance of realistic hope, whilst not tipping too far into doom–and we must personalise this to each conversation, each piece of writing. No one person is the same, no one person knows the same amount of information, no one person will feel the same way about it all.
We must be adaptable in the way we discuss the climate. There will be no blanket instruction on how to treat people, we must react to them and their reactions in the present moment. The fact that climate change is real is enough to send people into a panic, or a rage, let alone all the information that is kept from us about how bad everything is. Whereas others might see the downfall of society as an opportunity to create a better future and welcome the news of climate collapse.
If we hold these conversations with empathy and grace, connect deeply with people on their most pressing concerns, and provide a space for them to get through the turmoil of emotions, we will be in a much better position to tend to our earth and offer her the support she needs to look after us all.
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Inspirations:
Eye of the Storm: Facing climate and social chaos with calm and courage — Terry Lepage
I Want A Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor - Andrew Boyd
lovely, thoughtful piece. thank you for featuring my response. love what you say about adapting your approach to different people and circumstances, totally agree!
along the lines of what dan says, im also thinking about my social feeds/irl interactions about climate change and the tone is so ironic and defeatist. like, “whelp, 80 degrees in october? love that for the planet. thanks jeff bezos.” and i think thats like a totally valid coping mechanism and sometimes the right response for the situation-- but i also feel its part of a culture that looks down on big emotions and sincerity. like what if we actually expressed the grief and rage!! how cathartic and healing and productive that could be!!
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adamhardy_latest-climate-assessment-reveals-how-much-activity-7131238762595901442-9aGS - about Prof Katherine Hayhoe, an excellent climate communicator IMHO