https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/say-what-starting-climate-conversation
You’re hearing it everywhere now. From us at Climate Reality back in 2017. From us again in 2019. From the Los Angeles Times. From rock star scientists at TED.
Everyone saying basically the same thing.
If you’re concerned about what the climate crisis means for the Earth and our future, the single most important thing you can do is talk about it with your friends and family.
Why?
Because in between all the shouting voices, they might not know who to listen to. Who in the media they can trust. But they know they can trust you. And when you talk, they listen.
That’s powerful. Because no one else can reach them like you can. No one else can make the crisis personal like you can. No one else can make them rethink their perspective and inspire them to act like you can.
Plus, chances are they’ve heard from all the usual suspects already. Most likely, they’ve heard as much as they’re going to hear from the famous voices in the news and – one way or another – they’ve done as much as they’re going to do.
Or at least as much as they think they’ll do. Because there’s someone important they haven’t heard from. Someone who – just by speaking up – turns climate from a huge issue out there about people in faraway places and famous voices in the news to one about us. An issue we care about and act on.
You.
“Alright, I’m in,” you tell yourself.
But where do you start? Don’t you need a PhD next to your name and all the latest scientific reports and climate facts at your fingertips to be the one talking to your friends and family about the climate crisis?
Not at all.
Sure, you can dump all kinds of facts on your friends. But there’s a better way to move them and make them remember what you say. (And if facts alone were going to convince people and carry the day, we’d have solved this a long, long, long time ago).
It’s simple: tell them a story. Cognitive science shows how stories engage the brain in a way that facts alone don’t – with at least one researcher claiming that we’re 22 times more likely to remember facts wrapped in a story than facts alone.
(This is as true for you as it is for the people you talk to. After all, you don’t want to be there all ready to go and then have your mind go blank.)
Of course there are many powerful stories you could tell about the climate crisis. But there’s a simple one we’d suggest that takes people on an emotional journey from concern to hope to a feeling of empowerment and courage. Best of all, you don’t even really have to be the kind of person who thinks of themselves as a natural storyteller to use it.