People Don't Relate To Climate Change - Here's What To Do About It
HOT WEATHER, DRY PARK by Climate Visuals
Humans are highly visual creatures.
For our entire existence, we’ve relied on our visual cues for basic adaptive behaviours such as finding food, shelter, and mates.
This is pretty much common knowledge, which is why when it comes to marketing, content created with visuals is known to be much more engaging for users. For example, tweets with an image receive 5x more engagement than those without.
But when it comes to climate change, it’s an issue that isn’t easy to visualise.
The climate crisis is made up of long-term, cumulative effects that can’t easily be directly observed. It’s, for most of the Global North, intangible and abstract.
We associate climate change with the polar bear, starving on a melting glacier floating in the ocean, or perhaps with imagery of forest fires blazing through miles of woodland. But this imagery has given us the impression that climate change is a distant problem, and won’t affect us.
We feel bad about the polar bears, and we pay attention to forest fires on the news, but it doesn’t actually relate to our day-to-day lives. We forget about these struggles as quickly as we learn about them.
How do you change this narrative and get people to relate to climate change–and take action?
Why people don’t relate to climate change
Humans are often absent from the representation of the impacts of climate change, even though humans are the sole cause of it.
Visuals are the most effective communication tools for evoking emotion and getting people to take action. Including identifiable people in imagery–showing real people not staged pictures–will enable people to relate much more than an animal or a landscape.
Imagery of extreme weather and ‘scary’ climate impacts are great at capturing people's attention, making climate change seem emotionally powerful, but they may leave people feeling disconnected (and overwhelmed).
Looking at the two images below, which do you relate to more? Which image makes climate change feel like a “human” problem?
Imagery of “solutions” or people taking action may make people feel like they are more able to do something about the climate crisis, but it may reduce people’s sense of urgency as it doesn’t convey a threat. They may also feel as if the issue is being taken care of–that they don’t really need to do anything.
How does the below image make you feel? Does it inspire you to action, or does it lull you into a sense that someone else is dealing with the problem?
OCG Saving The Ocean from UnSplash
People may also relate more to local imagery if they are able to see themselves in the pictures–a.k.a imagery of people in the Global North, usually white and middle class, affected by climate change–but some argue this image is disengaging as, again, they feel someone else is dealing with the problem for them.
Is a shift in imagery the answer?
Research by Climate Visuals found the imagery used to communicate the climate crisis can – and should – be more diverse than polar bears and melting ice.
This is what they found:
“The research combined two different methods. Four structured discussion groups (with a total of 32 citizens) were held: two in London, and two in Berlin. Participants responded to dozens of climate images, engaging in detailed discussions about what they saw. Following this in-depth research, an international online survey of over 3,000 people was conducted, with participants split equally between the UK, Germany and the US. “
The results found seven key findings that represent the most important lessons for communicators who want to bring awareness to climate change.
The Seven Climate Visuals principles
1) Show ‘real people’ not staged photo-ops
Emotional expression is a strong tool. Climate Visual's focus groups, however, preferred "genuine" photos over staged ones, which they perceived as gimmicky or even exploitative. In their survey, politicians—who are infamously lacking in authenticity and credibility—received some of the lowest ratings (across all three countries).
2) Tell new stories
Images of smokestacks, deforestation, and polar bears on melting ice that participants could immediately and easily understand tended to receive higher ratings in their online survey (which captured rapid responses to images, rather than deeper debate).
For audiences with little background knowledge or interest in climate change, familiar, "classic" imagery may be extremely helpful, but they also led to scepticism and weariness in the discussion groups. They are powerful means of informing a crowd that "this narrative is about climate change." But do they want to hear this story?
Images that are less well-known but more thought-provoking can help communicate a fresh story about climate change and adjust how the public perceives it visually.
3) Show climate causes at scale
People don't always grasp how climate change affects their daily life, according to the research. Individual "causes" of climate change, such as consuming meat, might not be acknowledged as such and, if they are, might elicit defensive responses.
It is more impactful to depict "problematic" behaviours at a large scale, such as a congested highway, rather than just one motorist, when illustrating the connections between these behaviours and climate change.
FEMALE WORKERS SORT OUT PLASTIC BOTTLES FOR RECYCLING IN A FACTORY from Climate Visuals
4) Climate impacts are emotionally powerful
More than "causes" or "solutions," survey respondents in all three countries were moved by climate consequences, such as floods and the devastation caused by extreme weather. Images of climate effects might inspire a desire to act, but they can also be overpowering due to their emotional potency.
Overcoming this can be done by combining visual representations of climate impacts with a specific behavioural "activity" that individuals can adopt, showing them that they do have power and can choose to make a difference.
5) Understand your audience
Unsurprisingly, responses to the photos they evaluated were influenced by people's levels of concern or scepticism about climate change.
However, other distinctions also became apparent. Those on the political right experienced considerably flatter emotional reactions when shown images of "remote" climate impacts.
Both people on the political left and right experienced generally favourable feelings when they saw images of "solutions" to climate change.
6) Show local (but serious) climate impacts
Images showing localised climate impacts are more likely to have an impact when they depict a specific person or group of people with recognisable emotions.
However, there must be a balance between localising climate change (so that people understand the issue is relevant to them and trivialising the topic (by not making clear enough links to the bigger picture).
7) Be very careful with protest imagery
Images of protests (or demonstrators) received some of the lowest ratings in the study due to widespread scepticism.
Images of (what people characterised as) "typical environmentalists" in our discussion groups only really resonated with the minority of individuals who already considered themselves to be activists and campaigners. Images of protests may promote the belief that climate change is something that affects "them" rather than "us" because most people do not identify with those who protest it.
Images of protests that featured people who were directly impacted by climate change were deemed to be more compelling and authentic.
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When choosing your imagery for your communications, both internally and externally, consider the above principles to create a piece that speaks directly to your audience.
You can find a great range of images to use at Climate Visuals, an image library based on international social research and evidence to catalyse imagery that is not just illustrative but truly impactful.
