Rethinking climate communications and the “psychological climate paradox”

Abstract

Climate science has provided ever more reliable data and models over the last 20–30 years, thereby indicating increasingly severe impacts in the coming decades and centuries. Nonetheless, public concern for climate change and the issue's perceived importance has been declining over the past few decades, thus giving less public support for ambitious climate policies. Conventional climate communication strategies have failed to resolve this “climate paradox.” This article reviews research on the psychology of the climate paradox, and rethinks new emerging strategies for how to resolve it in the coming decades.