Lucia Graves explores the difficulty of communicating and engaging the public in climate change debates. Graves argues that the two dominant narratives, one of doom and gloom with apocalyptic visions of the future and the other of hope, with optimistic images of families on bikes, are over simplistic as in reality people’s emotions are complicated and multi-faceted. Research has shown that the binary of hope or fear is not enough to inspire action. Instead effort should be made to make issues relevant to your audience’s life as climate change may be global but it has a profoundly personal impact. Overall, Graves highlights the need for the conversation to take place as a 2016 report from Yale’s programme on climate communication found one in four Americans say they’ve “never” heard someone discussing it. Photo credit: Ariel Molina/EPA
