It's time to talk about climate risk differently

This is a free-to-view edition of Unpacking Climate Risk. Become a paying subscriber today to get articles sent direct to your inbox three times a week.

When trying to change the behavior of people and organizations, the words used matter a great deal.  After more than 50 years of global warming and an avalanche of data showing the perils of rising temperatures, complacency among individuals and corporations remains all too prevalent.

As I was crafting a LinkedIn post for my last article, I made note of a slight anomaly in the language we use to describe “climate risk” and started to wonder whether there was a better way to talk about it.

The anomaly (it’s not exactly ‘wrong’) is that “climate risk” encompasses cause and consequence.  It doesn’t focus attention specifically on the cause itself – the harmful human activity that produces risk in the first place.  It's a bit like calling “the risk of going skydiving” something like “gravity risk” or “the risk of smoking” something like “lung risk.”  

After all, gravity, lungs, and climate are all perfectly natural things that we live with perfectly well.  What’s risky are the human activities undertaken in relation to them: jumping from planes, breathing tobacco smoke, and emitting greenhouse gases.  It wouldn’t be wrong to describe the act of smoking as creating a risk to lungs, but it would perhaps be easier to modify behavior if the risk were linked more directly to the activity.

The way I see it, there are three ways we can talk about the threats posed by climate change.  “Climate risk” is the most general, and arguably too broad and anodyne a term to spur behavior change. “Global warming risk” is a little better, as it frames the issue in terms of the outcomes we will experience if the risky behavior persists.  However, it also allows human-induced warming to be conflated with natural warming trends, which isn’t helpful. “Emissions risk” ties the risk directly to the activity that is the root cause of the problem.  It cuts to the heart of the behavior that we are trying to modify.

When we talk about the risk of skydiving, we normally frame the subject in terms of the activity that creates the risk.  It’s not outcome specific.  We don’t call it the “risk of a hard landing” or the “risk of a failed parachute.”  The point of framing the risk via the activity is to alert budding skydivers about the panoply of problems they face by choosing to skydive. 

Once you’ve jumped out of the plane, the risk of a failed parachute becomes very important – but there’s precious little you can do about it at that point.  

You may believe using more graphic, outcome-focused descriptions would do more to dissuade someone from skydiving, but human psychology is a strange beast. The campaign against smoking combines accurate depictions of the deadly diseases it causes with the more mundane consequences, like the effect on a person’s appearance, their smell, and dental hygiene.  In contrast, the campaign against climate change focuses squarely on scary disaster stories.  Perhaps there are more trivial consequences of warming that could pull on the heartstrings more effectively?  Think about favorite holiday destinations ruined by overheating, or desirable foods becoming more expensive.

Anti-smoking campaigns around the developed world have been broadly successful.  Other authors, though none very recently, have pointed out the similarities between smoking and climate change and argued that the anti-global-warming campaign could learn a lot from the former’s success.  

Both smoking and climate change are long-term problems, with chronic effects.  But they also present risks that can (probably) be stabilized if and when the dangerous activities that generate them are curtailed.  I mean, if we go cold turkey on producing GHG emissions right now, I understand that the climate would likely get no worse (the effect of tipping points being a wild card factor).  As doctors say, a long-term heavy smoker can only benefit from quitting right away.

The main difference between the two is that smoking is an individual choice with (mostly) individual consequences (second-hand smoke notwithstanding).  Emitting greenhouse gases is a societal choice with collective consequences.  It’s hard enough to change peoples’ behavior when the adverse outcomes are mostly personal.  Getting people to do something that curtails their own behavior while benefiting others will, I suspect, be a much more difficult challenge.

We obviously want to see concerted action to address climate change, and most of the critical decisions can only ever be taken by governments.  Generating political will is a cultural crusade and requires a grassroots effort in which messaging is very important.

I think we should try varying the language and tactics we use to inform and persuade people to change their emissions behavior.  This means pressing a range of buttons and seeing what ultimately works.

Part of this may include tying climate risk more directly to the emissions that are the real root of the problem.

I concede, though, that this is unlikely to have very much impact.