Graduate Final Report

Compiled by Daniel Spruill for

Climate Change Communication (COM 579) with Dr. David Berube
 Place Attachment and Surrounding Issues in Climate Change

Communication

Introduction:

Over the past few decades the science behind the certainty of climate change

has become more confident, the last IPCC report on climate change released in the fall

of 2018 states that it was ‘…extremely likely… that anthropogenic climate change was

occurring (IPCC, 2018). With this and the general consensus in the scientific

community, one might expect to see people from all walks of life coming together to

solve a problem that will impact them all, unfortunately one would be disappointed.

Instead, we are mired in a divisive war between political, ideological, and religious

groups, effectively summarized in Leiserowitz’s book “Global Warming’s 6 Americas”.

This is not an issue of science but of how science and reality have been communicated

to the public through various stakeholders. It would not be an exaggeration in saying

that the communication of climate change to the public amounted as a complete

catastrophe which subsequently helped deepened the political divide in the United

States of America. That is not to say that it is a lost cause, in fact we may have the

means to bring about awareness and social change by altering the way we present

climate change to specific audiences. It is my belief that there is a small set of climate

communication issues that should be addressed in order to appeal to audiences that

may not be concerned about the future climate change can cause. The issues that are

discussed in this report focus on place attachment, immediate response versus

resilience planning, and lack of general empathy felt for one another. These may not

seem like they are very related, but I would postulate that these issues are highly

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intertwined when it comes to people’s perception of risk and acceptance that something

is changing with our climate. I will explore how these issues have or have not been

utilized by various agents when communicating to stakeholders, the public, and what is

or is not working.

The Issues:

In the past, many groups have tried using global message framing through

highlighting the aspect of climate justice, a term to describe how those who are least

responsible for climate change are sometimes the most at risk. They wish to play on

one’s innate sense of morality and ethics in hopes that people’s empathy for those

suffering would lead to greater acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. However,

in order to achieve action this type of framing requires someone to take the blame and

shoulder the responsibility. George Marshall states this well in his book Don’t Even

Think About It, ”… they will doggedly insist that any loss [taking the blame] is unfair,

even if, by delaying an agreement, they end up paying far more” (Marshall, 2014). I

think that one of the reasons that many don’t feel empathy for those in distress is

because of the psychological distance between the story and the audience. It is hard to

feel empathy for people that are separate from one’s self. We are a species that

become culturally bound to our own areas and values, reaching past those is very

difficult for people because they have a difficult time finding what connects them with

others (Spence, 2011).

Due to this, I believe that to increase the awareness and engagement in the

issue we must focus on local message framing, staying within those cultural boundaries.

This is still quite the broad topic, so we will go farther and look at a specific type of local

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message framing, place attachment (Gifford, R. 2011). This is a term used to describe

the way that people feel attached to a certain location. This can be due to sentimental

reasons, pride felt in the area, or any reason why an individual would feel a connection

with a specific place. For instance, people often feel very attached to their hometown

and are likely to defend it if someone attacks (Scannell, 2013). When compared to the

global message framing discussed earlier, place attachment is effective because it

stays within those cultural boundaries where people can empathize with their neighbors

and because what effects the area will also affect themselves. Research has found that

this type of message is even effective for increasing engagement by those that are

skeptical of the climate change issue or are not concerned about the potential impacts

(Scannell, 2013).

Another communication issue that has arisen from the climate change debate

comes from the difference between the immediate response of disasters and resilience

planning/adaptation. A way to think about this can be explained with the following

graphic that will be familiar to most people as something they learned in

elementary/middle school English classes.

Figure 1: Story Plot Diagram

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The introduction is normal life, the day to day actions of people. The second is the rising

action, for instance a hurricane may have formed and is projected to make landfall

where you live. It strikes and the immediate response becomes the climax. This is how

people initially respond to the disaster. Interestingly, this stage is full of people

emphasizing with those stricken by disaster. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti,

more than $8 million was donated to the relief fund by average citizens in just 48 hours,

not including food, clothes, shelter, and ect. that were also donated (Gao, 2011).

However, after this immediate response phase turns to the falling action the news

coverage tends to fade and with it the attention of the public. This is the period where

people begin to work toward bringing their lives back to normal. Finally, we reach the

conclusion where people have returned more or less to their normal stable life.

Unfortunately, while this is appropriate to showcase the plot of a story in a book, in

reality this is just one part of the overarching story which might look something like the

following graphic.

Figure 2

And yet when these events occur, we only talk about it for that single event when we

should be discussing this as a series of events. We can’t begin to plan for future

disasters until we discuss what is going on when there is attention being paid to the

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issue, not when everything is back to normal. This is partly because of our innate hubris

in that we won’t be affected by another disaster even though the last disaster may have

destroyed everything that we owned (Marshall, 2014). This can be tied into place

attachment when it is asked why those that suffer from these events receive the

empathy of strangers when those promoting climate justice do not? I believe that the

news coverage of these events highlights, though temporary, one’s place attachment

beyond their own area on a national scale. In these moments political discourse is

minimized in favor of a we are all Americans approach, but this only lasts until the

immediate response gives way to rebuilding. After that the media attention falls away

and people begin to forget what is going on far away to focus on what is going on in

their immediate vicinity (Altinay, Z., 2017). This has to do with who is or isn’t

communicating the information to the stakeholders, the general public, and what they

should be focusing on.

The Agents of Information

Today people constantly have information being directed at them from various

groups. In modern society, one of the best ways for people to learn about what is going

on has been from the various media outlets CNN, MSNBC, BBC, FOX, and the list goes

on. These outlets each have their own way that they tailor what they present in order to

fit within their audiences’ values. However, quick searches through each of these outlets

after a natural disaster will come up with many articles and clips talking about recovery

and relief efforts. They all talk about solidarity with our neighbors and helping each

other, even conservative bastions like FOX News, and yet these stories become a rare

sight as time goes by and the event is forgotten. When looking on FOX News under the

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tag of Hurricane Harvey the last story about the storm was published in November of

2017, just two months after the storm hit but nothing since (Babin, B, 2017). This is a

trend that is seen on all major media networks. These groups have huge amounts of

influence with the various communities that rely on them for their information and

because of that these outlets have the greatest potential in encouraging action for this

problem. An important note for the outlets that aim for audiences that are skeptical or

just not concerned with climate change that action to mitigate climate change effect

does not always have to come hand in hand with acceptance of the climate change

debate. That is because place attachment can sidestep that part of the debate and lead

to people acting because it will benefit them in some way. A study was once conducted

in communities around Lake Erie that showed that those that were not concerned with

climate change were highly motivated in engaging with environmental activism when

place attachment was involved, in this case it involved cleaning pollution in the area

because it effected the communities (Kates and Wilbanks, 2003).

The way that the media networks are communicating the immediate response to

natural disasters is great because it is bringing together the many different communities

in this divided country to empathize with one another. What it they are lacking is staying

on the issue while those afflicted are rebuilding their lives. After Hurricane Katrina hit

New Orleans causing the massive damage that shocked the world the media did

eventually move on, but not everyone. In this case, the government actually contracted

a well-known local photographer Donn Young to document the recovery efforts of the

society and create an exhibit that showcased the struggles and solidarity of the issue.

This exhibit was titled 40 Days and 40 Nights which was a resounding success in

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showing the empathy of people from all over the nation is still there even after the news

cameras were gone. I believe that the news outlets could take a leaf from Young’s book

in how they represent the rebuilding efforts. People from all walks of life had come

together to rebuild even if they were not affected by the storm personally (Young, D,

2019). The news outlets should show this as part of their coverage of the disaster in

order to get others behind the recovery efforts. People stay within their own groups that

share their values, but if they see on their news station people that also share their

values are helping they will be likely to also lend a hand.

News outlets are only a single actor in communicating climate change issues.

Another is the bureaucrats and elected politicians. Elected politicians could be

described as a representation of place attachment for a specific area. Whenever a

disaster strikes, they are among the first to talk about the communities and how they will

recover from the incident. For those afflicted, elected officials can bring forth the pride

that they feel in the area and solidify their intents to rebuild and carry on. When

Hurricane Harvey struck Huston, the U.S. Representative for the area, Rep Brian Babin

R-TX, was interviewed by FOX News and the first words that he uttered were about how

proud he was in the locals and local officials (Babin, B, 2017). Bringing out the pride in

his constituents fuels actions to rebuild and return to some semblance of normalcy after

a disaster (Marshall, 2014). The value of this should not be underestimated as it is

important to motivate people to get back to their lives, however I believe that it also

provides a great opportunity to encourage those to plan ahead for the next disaster.

This is a unique period when a politician will have the ear of those who need that

encouragement to rebuild where s/he could push resilience. This is not a conversation

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that needs to actually discuss climate change, but merely encourages resilience to

future events. Elected politicians also can help keep the attention and empathy of those

around the nation not letting the issue slide into the back of our memories. From their

unique position they can take the idea to the national stage and address all those about

how they can help and/or protect themselves from potential disasters.

But perhaps the greatest area of climate change communication can come from

the scientist. In the past, communication from scientist on this issue led to the issues

that we see today with the controversy surrounding climate change. But in recent years,

the focus of climate change communication from scientist has changed a lot. By their

nature, scientist want to discuss the science aspect of the issue which makes sense as

it is their field. However, this is not effective because people just have a hard time

understanding the complexities of science. Scientist are changing the way that they

frame their communication with communities by using place attachment to encourage

advance planning for disasters.

There are several great examples of this, one of the best takes place in North

Carolina with the North Carolina Sea Grant program. In an effort led by Dr. Jessica

Whitehead, they have decided rather than trying to educate the stakeholders in the area

in the complexities of atmospheric and hydrological sciences, they would talk to the

people in the area. This program is called Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaption

Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) and instead of telling the people what they need to know,

it focuses on supporting the local communities’ concerns and issues regarding coastal

management and a changing climate (Kettle, N et al, 2014). The VCAPS members will

gather as many different stakeholders in an area from local business owners, home

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owners, local officials, and anyone from the community to talk about their issues and

how region-specific problems may affect their homes and businesses. From here the

scientist will work from the issues raised by the community itself find solutions. This

approach to climate change communication pays attention to the fact that science itself

isn’t the solution to climate change and telling people what to change, but rather it

listens to people. By working within the issues that communities bring up, VCAPS gives

them agency to frame the issues that arise within their own worldviews and ideologies.

The limits to this type of communication is that it needs the communities to reach out to

them in order to begin. What could help would be if elected politicians and bureaucrats

presented this as an option to assist in the rebuilding process. That way measures

discussed during the VCAPS process could be implemented as people rebuilt and

returned to their normal life more prepared for the impacts of climate change.

Another approach can be seen from the newly developed resilience forum

created by NOAA to help people, including other scientist, understand the risks and

make decisions based on local stakeholders. The point of this exercise is to help people

understand the circumstances of others and take their concerns to heart when working

to find mitigate and adapt to climate change. By taking upon roles of various

stakeholders you have to decide what they would be concerned about rather than using

your own background. With this you come to a conclusion as a group what would work

the best for your community.

It is easy to think of the issue of climate change as a ‘us versus them’ scenario

with staunch religious conservatives on one side and socialist liberals on the other, but

in reality, it is much more difficult to ascribe such traits. As George Marshall discovered

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when he interviewed members of the Texas Tea Party, there are more than a few

similarities between these two groups. After talking to the Tea Party members Marshall

is convinced that it isn’t ignorance or unwillingness to learn about the science that

prevents them from joining the climate change movement (Marshall, 2014). So how can

we communicate climate change in a way that will reach everyone, or at least the

majority of people? It won’t be an easy task, but I think the answer lies with the public

themselves.

Strategy

Since climate change first was defined there has been a great debate about

whether or not it is really and whether we should care even if it does exist. This problem

has divided members of the general public, separating them into their own ideological

camps with others that share their values. This might be the result of how climate

change was originally communicated by various groups. Regardless, we now have to

deal with the consequences by finding some sort of middle ground where people from

both sides of the spectrum can come together and agree so we can start preventing the

worst of the impacts caused by climate change.

In order to achieve this, we cannot ignore either side, their thoughts and

concerns when confronting the problem. There are three main issues that should be

addressed when communicating climate change that we have discussed in this report.

Place attachment is an important device in helping people understand the impacts of

climate change as it relates to their location. This is because people feel a connection

with where they live for various reasons. Along with this is the difference in

communicating immediate response to disasters related to climate change and the

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longer-term planning for future events. Such communications are vital when it comes to

the issue of climate change because the drop of attention to an issue after the

immediate response makes it nearly impossible to discuss long-term mitigation and

adaptation measure that an be taken. Finally, we need to find a way to rouse empathy

from individuals and aimed at the issue if we are to come together and work toward

finding a solution. This is not a guide for a solution, this is merely a recommendation of

strategy to communicate climate change in order to bring people together so they can

find the solution that works best for them and the environment.

To begin with, strategies similar to that of VCAPS should be utilized to bring

together a community to discuss the issues that they are faced with. However, it can be

difficult to bring all the stakeholder of the situation together when many do not believe

there is a problem or are concerned with how climate change may affect their lives.

However, following a natural disaster like a hurricane when national or even

international attention is being paid to a select region it would be a great place and time

to bring together people in solidarity. This would require the various media outlets to

continue coverage of a disaster even after the immediate response.

As we have seen, after the immediate response has worn off the news wish to

move to other stories that are newer. However, these media companies are great at

gathering people together that share the same values and ideologies. Through

broadcasting the plight of their followers, it should raise the awareness of the problem to

others that share the same cultural boundaries and are more likely to emphasize with

those victims. It is important insure that these outlets don’t drop the ball and lessen the

coverage of the issue. Going back to the figures included above, we cannot let this go

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back to an event by event discussion. We must carry through the conversation as a

series because as more and more people are added to the discussion, we might be

able to keep the normalcy to come back and people just accepting what has happened

as the norm. By preventing that, it gives a chance to add in the other aspects to this

strategy.

Namely, community-based responses to the issues. Instead of just sending

people back to rebuild, we need to bring those in the community together and start a

discussion about how they were affected. What are their concerns? The various science

and engineering communities should be there to support, rather than rule, the

conversations of the public. In areas that may have been affected by severe floods, the

scientific community could bring together ideas and designs that would be better

equipped for coping to floods that may occur more often in the future. The point of

having these as community led is to give the locals the agency in the decisions that

need to be made if we are to respond to the changing climate. Furthermore, elected

politicians and local officials should help unify their constituencies by being vocal and

appealing to their concepts of place attachment. People feel a great amount of pride in

where they live, and when that place is threatened or destroyed like after a natural

disaster, they are quite vulnerable. Though they have the desire to rebuild what was

lost, as it is hard for people to move away from the area where they have such

attachments. The politicians can help by facilitating the discussions and forums that

bring together the local and scientific communities around the issues.

This type of communicating the impacts of climate change leading to change is

intriguing because it does not necessarily need to include the actual discussion of the

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science behind climate change itself. By skipping over this debate, we can also jump

past many of the aspects of what are dividing the populaces on the issue, allowing for

more concerted efforts to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate without ever

having to use the polarizing words ‘climate change’.

Conclusion

I believe that though there have been many differences in the debate about

climate change in the past, as a society we can move on and engage in activism toward

the issue. Everyone in this country comes from different walks of life, different

upbringings, and different values. Yet there are times that we can come together as a

whole in response to disaster to offer help to our neighbors even if they are on the other

side of the country. Times when we are not divided by our political parties or religion

and focus on what we have in common. The changing climate does not abide by

political and cultural boundaries, it affects all those in front of it indiscriminately. I hope

that the strategies presented in this report enable the various actors of information

communicate appropriately with stakeholders to create a better understanding and

proper outlook to the future. Only with the input from all the stakeholders will we be able

to create a better tomorrow.

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References

Altinay, Z. Visual Communication of Climate Change: Local framing and place

attachment. Coastal Management, 45, 2017, 293-309

Babin, B. Interview by Fox & Friends. Texas Congressman on Hurricane Harvey

recovery. 26 August 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwcSALkX1HQ

Gifford, R. The dragons of inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change

mitigation. American Psychologist, 66, 2011, 290-302

Gao, H., Barbier, G., and Goolsby, R. Harnessing the Crowdsourcing Power of Social

Media for Disaster Relief. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 26, 2011, 10-14

IPCC. Global warming of 1.5⁰C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global

warming of 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas

emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the

threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate

poverty. IPCC, 2018, In Press.

Kates, R. W., and Wilbanks, T. J. Making the global local: Responding to climate change

concerns from the bottom up. Environment, 45, 2003, 12-23

Kettle, N., Dow, K., Tuler, S., Webler, T., Whitehead, J., and Miller, K. Integrating

scientific and local knowledge to inform risk-based management approaches for

climate adaptation. Climate Risk Management, 4, 2014, 17-31

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., and Roser-Renouf, C. Global Warming’s 6 Americas: An

Audience Segmentation Analysis. Yale University, 2009, 132 pp.

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Marshall, G. Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate

Change. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, 250 pp. ISBN: 9781632861023

Scannell, L., and Gifford, R. Personally Relevant Climate Change: The role of place

attachment and local versus global message framing in engagement.

Environment and Behavior, 45, 2013, 60-85, doiL 10.1177/0013916511421196

Spence, A., Poortinga, W., and Pidgeon, N. Psychological Distance of Climate Change.

Risk Analysis, 32, 2012, 957-972

Young, D. “40 Days and 40 Nights, Art and Disaster: A Photographers Perspective on

Hurricane Katrina Recovery in New Orleans” Natural Hazards, Disasters and

Climate Change Adaptation Lecture Series, Louisiana. 6 February 2019, Poe

Hall, Room 2018, Guest Speaker.

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