Why having a conversation about climate change might be more powerful than you realise
What do you think the collective noun for a group of WI members would be?
Perhaps ‘surge’, ‘force’ or ‘spark’?
It would certainly have to be something that speaks to the awesome collective power of your membership, and our question today is, how might that power help to build support for climate action where you live?
Talking about climate change can sometimes feel like tiptoeing through a field of conversational landmines - especially when you’re unsure of how the person you’re speaking with thinks or feels about it. If climate is something you struggle to have a conversation about, or even choose to sidestep altogether, you’re not alone.
For the past couple of years, our organisation - Larger Us - has been running a programme called Let’s Talk Climate which helps people to overcome these challenges and to start conversations about climate change in their communities.
We’ve already worked with the WI and its members, so you might be familiar with us if you’ve joined our training before (hello again if that’s you!) But if this is the first you’ve heard of us, here’s why we think climate conversations are so important and how you might start some yourself.
Why are conversations so powerful?
We already have lots of evidence that conversations can help to shape public opinion and shift Government policy.
Consider the Repeal the 8th campaign in Ireland, which led up to the referendum in which two-thirds of people voted to overturn the country’s ban on abortion. This represented a huge cultural shift in a nation where 69% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic and where the church has always stood against abortion.
After the vote, a study found that of those who changed their mind, 39% of people cited a conversation with family or friends as the reason. Brave women deciding to share personal stories was a deciding factor in bringing about this huge social and political change.
Another example is equal marriage - this is one of the deepest, broadest and fastest shifts in values on record. Since the early 1990s, LGBTQ+ people and their allies have campaigned for the right of same-sex couples to marry.
Campaign tactics included protest, legal challenges and political lobbying, but conversation and personal testimony were absolutely vital to the shift in public opinion. What’s more, since equal marriage was introduced in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, research has found that as more Britons say they know someone in a same-sex marriage, support for it has increased.
And now there’s emerging evidence that conversations can make a difference to the level of support for climate action within a community, too. In 2021, the charity Neighbours United rallied volunteers to engage in more than a thousand doorstep conversations about climate change in the town of Trail, a rural community in Canada.
Conversations focused on building connection, storytelling, and sharing real-life experiences. Afterwards, 40% of the people the volunteers had conversations with reported feeling more supportive of climate action.
Why WI members are so crucial
Our trust in politicians and the Government is on the wane. In the past decade, the proportion of people who say they have low or no trust in MPs has risen from 54% to 76%. However, the trust we have in our neighbours is among the highest in the world, with 84% of us in the UK saying we trust the people in our neighbourhood somewhat or completely.
In addition to this, recent research tells us that among the people most trusted on climate change are those who show a mix of passion for tackling it and empathy and understanding for what life is like for normal people.
This means that if you can connect your desire for action on climate change to ideas that will help to make people’s lives better, you have a strong chance of building trust and support for action within your community through your conversations.
This is why, as a WI member - with a deep knowledge of the place where you live, the people in your community and the issues that matter to them - your voice is so powerful.
Climate Outreach’s latest report is very clear:
“People are crying out for authentic, positive stories about progress: what’s already happening, especially in their local areas, what we can be proud of and what can be done to make things better.”
Local stories feel real, relatable and doable - people trust what they can see happening in their own communities. As someone who cares about climate and nature, and who has their finger on the pulse of what’s happening locally, you are in a fantastic position to do this!
How to get started
Ready to get going? Here are some things to think about to help your conversations go well:
1. Seek to understand, not to persuade
Intention is everything. If you enter into a climate conversation with a mental list of all the points you want to make, you risk alienating the other person. Ever been to a party and been cornered by someone who only wants to talk about themselves or what they enjoy? It’s not a great experience, right?
So set aside any attempts to persuade the person to come around to your way of thinking. Instead, get yourself into the mindset of trying to understand them, their point of view and how they came to form their opinions.
2. Keep it relatable
Climate change is a huge, complex, global issue, and many people find speaking about it too overwhelming, too abstract or too far from their own experience to be meaningful.
In your conversations, you might not even mention the words ‘climate change’ at first, and that’s ok.
A good way to engage someone is to start with things that feel real and tangible to them, like where they live, the places they care about, their family, friends and hobbies.
You could start a conversation about a local nature spot, or how your children or grandchildren get to school, the cost of food in the supermarket, holidays, articles you’ve seen in the local news, posts you’ve encountered on social media or even that British failsafe, the weather.
Whatever it is, trying to focus the conversation on what the other person loves or enjoys is a great starting point.
3. Listen and ask curious questions
While climate change might be an issue you think about a lot, it may not be top of mind for other people, so your conversations with them can be a brilliant opportunity to create the space for them to think about it more deeply.
In her book, Time to Think, writer Nancy Kline tells us: ‘The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.’
And what do we mean by ‘quality attention?’ It’s about how well we listen, not speak, and how well we encourage the other person to formulate their own thoughts and opinions rather than be an audience for our own.
You can do this by asking curious questions like ‘Can you tell me more about that?’, or ‘How did you come to think that?’ or ‘What was that experience like for you?’ and really listening carefully to the other person’s answers.
As one WI member who joined our training said: “I have learnt to ask questions rather than present statements and I’ve seen that this can lead to meaningful conversations.” You might be surprised at where a well-timed, curious question can take you!
4. Share stories, not facts
Many of us fear that if climate facts don’t trip off our tongue with ease, we’ll fail to convince the person we’re speaking with, or look like an idiot who doesn’t know what we’re talking about.
But we strongly encourage you to focus on stories instead. Humans respond so much better to stories than facts, and they are much easier for us to remember and share.
What climate action is happening locally that you can talk with people about? You can craft a simple story by thinking about the beginning (the problem that needed to be solved), the middle (how people went about solving it) and the end (what happened as a result).
Focus on the human element - who are the characters involved? What challenges did they face? How did they feel about what they did in the end?
Weaving stories into your climate conversations is a sure-fire way to keep the other person engaged.
5. Shake off pressure, embrace learning
Finally, give yourself a bit of grace. All these skills take practice. Sometimes your conversations will go well, and sometimes they won't. That’s normal and ok! What matters is that you keep learning.
It might help to think of each one as a little experiment, and afterwards you can do a review - what went well, what didn’t, what might you do differently next time? Better still, why not embark on this journey with a WI friend and check in with each other? Let go of perfection, give yourself permission to roadtest these ideas and most of all, enjoy discovering new ways to connect with people on this important issue that you care about.
Who might you have the opportunity to chat with in the next week or so? How might you start a climate conversation? What questions could you ask them? Do you have any stories you could share in return? Get thinking, then get talking!
by Claire Brown, deputy director, Larger Us