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How to Sell Climate Action to Your Rural Conservative Neighbors
A field guide to difficult conversations about climate outside of big cities
State Representative Tiffiny Mitchell has a challenge. She is a Democrat from Oregon’s 32nd District, a beautiful region at the mouth of the Columbia River downstream from Portland. She’s also new to statewide politics in a region that’s seeing a growing urban-rural divide, and her district reflects that chasm. In fact, in December a coalition of loggers and farmers tried to oust Mitchell for supporting a bill that would increase regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The recall efforts ultimately failed, but the incident highlights how Mitchell faces major headwinds in selling climate action to her rural constituents.
While Monmouth polling shows that 69% of Americans want the government to take action on the human causes of climate change, there’s a strong partisan skew. A much lower percentage of Republican voters support action than Democratic voters. When they agree on the need to address the climate crisis, they don’t necessarily agree on how, or who should bear the responsibility to act.
Mitchell recently asked for my help in dealing with this disconnect. I’ve been in the trenches of creating social license for wind energy globally, and I write regularly about climate action, and so I understand how she is not alone in shouldering the challenge of communicating both the urgency of climate change and how to shape the right solutions. Though many people understand the stakes of the crisis, oftentimes, they find it difficult to engage with their conservative friends, family, and neighbors who seem skeptical about climate action. Often they avoid the conversation entirely, simply because they don’t know how to begin. It’s a big, ugly subject, so they avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Cognitive scientist John Cook has spent years finding creative solutions to help people talk about this existential question. He was the driving force behind Skeptical Science, a site that identifies and debunks climate disinformation sound bites, memes, and arguments. Cook now works at the Center for Climate Communication at George Mason University, where he researches what arguments do and don’t on our messy human…
