Bending the Curve: Is Climate Hushing the New Climate Denial?

In episode 5 of our YouTube series, Bending the Curve: Positive Progress on the Environment, we explore how Some political strategists are advising clients to stop talking about climate change. They believe the issue turns voters off. But is “climate hushing” just a new kind of climate denial?

Political strategists have found that many Americans accept that climate change is real but don’t want to hear about it all the time. According to one poll, more than 70 percent of Americans believe that climate change is affecting the planet. But rising prices, jobs threatened by artificial intelligence, lack of affordable housing and other daily concerns may feel more urgent.

Climate change can also seem remote or overwhelming. BBC weather presenter Matt Taylor has noted that audiences can become weary of the subject and switch off.

Last year, the left-leaning consulting firm, the Searchlight Institute, ran this headline: The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.

That creates a problem for anyone trying to communicate about climate.

From Greenwashing to Green Hushing

Businesses face the same pressure.

A few years ago, corporations competed to announce emission cuts and climate targets. Now some companies have become reluctant to discuss their environmental plans. This has been called green hushing.

Grist writer Kate Yoder reported that many companies with sustainability goals are becoming less willing to publicize them. One reason is concern about regulations designed to stop greenwashing and false environmental claims.

Those rules serve a purpose. Companies should be able to support what they claim. But there is a risk when businesses doing legitimate work decide that saying nothing is safer.

Silence Has Consequences

Massachusetts senator Sheldon Whitehouse has rejected climate hushing. Writing in the online magazine for public radio station WBUR-FM in Boston, he says leaders set the public agenda, including on the climate.

“In politics, you can make your own wind, or you can make your own doldrums,” he says. “The hushers are conceding defeat, falling into circular reasoning, asking us to make our own doldrums.”

Climate change won’t be fixed because people are tired of discussing it.

We know the planet has warmed. And it’s continuing to warm. Wildfires destroy homes. Hurricanes damage coastlines. Heat threatens lives and infrastructure. Avoiding the term “climate change” does not change those facts. In fact, it insults the victims.

The challenge is finding ways to discuss climate without ending the conversation before it begins. Matt Taylor, the BBC weather presenter, says finding the right moment when people are open to discussion may be key.

Talk About What Works

Another answer is to spend less time describing catastrophe and more time showing progress.

Wind and solar power are replacing part of the electricity once generated with coal and natural gas. Electric vehicles are gaining ground in major auto markets. New technologies are changing how homes, businesses and transportation use energy.

These developments do not mean climate change is solved. They mean people are working on it. That distinction matters.

People want to hear about problems they can help solve. They want evidence that policies, technologies and individual choices can produce results.

Climate change deserves discussion because its effects are already part of daily life. But that discussion does not have to begin and end with fear. Temperatures are rising. People are rising to the occasion, too.

That is a story worth telling.

Watch Episode 5 of Bending the Curve on YouTube.

What do you think? Should we stop talking about climate change? Or is it a kind of denial?

Image: Pixabay