Rethinking Climate Change Narratives: Lessons from a Public Debate

Reflections on Some LinkedIn Commentary

This is my first substantive post on my new Substack platform, Heavy Lifting, as I learn the ropes of this new medium. Here, I reflect on the comments I received on LinkedIn in response to my piece, We Need a New American Narrative for Talking About Climate Change.

I have been ably assisted by Dorothy — my AI collaborator via ChatGPT — a relationship that only began a few weeks ago, so we’re still learning how to work together. With a little help from her and a lot of insight from a thoughtful LinkedIn conversation, I’ve tried to capture the spirit of the debate. While I can’t reference every comment (you can read them yourself!), I’ve highlighted selected ones to illustrate important themes. Any errors in interpretation are mine; Dorothy bears no culpability.

Today climate change has become a highly polarized discussion along political lines. Those on the left are more concerned about it than those on the right, although there are very few real climate change deniers. In light of that one of the findings of a December 9, 2024, Pew Research Center Report is interesting and promising. It found that 88% of Democrat/Lean Democrat were frustrated that there is so much political disagreement about climate change but so did 73% of Republicans/Lean Republican. Tn/here seems to be a real appetite in America to find a new way to talk about climate change that isn’t tied to one political view of the other.

So what was the reaction to my call for a new narrative?

I first asked Dorothy if she could categorize the comments and she did so in categories she created as shown in the table below. The “Supportive Reformers” agreed with the premise but had a number of suggestions for what topics needed to be included or what issues needed to be addressed. An important one, and one which is getting increasing attention, is how climate change is affecting insurance coverage in terms of price or even it not being offered. Leon Olsen observed that “As more private property becomes increasingly more expensive to insure due to increasing climate risk, or becomes outright uninsurable…it will have a major impact on people’s lives.” Cosima Krueger-Cunningham echoed that point when she said “It may all boil down to what the insurers think and do” and “Wait for the shrieks when insurance premiums skyrocket to total unaffordability and/or people are denied coverage.” Stephanie McMahon pithily pointed out that “This will be the driver that makes Americans finally pay attention to climate change.” Others, such as Laura Draucker noted that ‘narrative alone is not going to address the larger issue of active lobbying against progress and the influence that lobbying has on US policy.

I asked Dorothy for examples of people in each group. The ones she cited for “Supportive Reformers” all made sense to me. I struggled more with those she classified as “Constructive Skeptics” and “Critical Opponents.” While no taxonomy scheme is perfect—whether done by human or machine—this was instructive to me in the early stages of my learning curve. For example, I noticed that Dorothy put some people in the same category. For the most part, the “Constructive Skeptics” weren’t so much skeptics about the need for a narrative but just thought other things were more important, like public policy (a view shared by Draucker) and technology developments.

Those in the “Critical Opponents” category were more focused on their objections to the existing narrative about climate change than my call for creating a common narrative. Paul Tice was a notable exception to this since he argued that “The whole bipartisanship argument is just a smokescreen that progressive Democrats use to pull weak-minded and unprincipled Republicans over to the left on climate and energy policy. The best government policy is not found at the mid-way point between right and wrong.”

Most of the other comments in this category were from those objected to the scientific claims upon which the existing narrative is based. For example, Tom Surmiak also expressed skepticism by arguing that the only way to prove a scientific hypothesis (like CO2 is causing global warming) is through an experiment and since it is not possible to conduct such an experiment “the hypothesis that CO2 causes the Earth warming (or the climate change) is NOT proven/falsified.” Probably the most critical comment I got came from Surmiak when he said, “Please, do not write about ‘climate denialism’. It is a nonsense statement showing that you are a leftie and not a person in the middle.” While I agree that I’m a “leftie,” I did provide some data about climate change deniers. But on this point David Jordan made an interesting observation that “Due to the social stigma and persecution faced by those who express scepticism about climate change, individuals fear being vilified, abused, and shamed.” I think there’s some truth in this, but it means that those who say they don’t believe in climate change really do mean it!

The many different views expressed in the comments were captured in a lively debate kicked off by Rob Bradley with the comment “Climategate ruined climate science for many observers too. And the false predictions, the exaggerations of climate doom. That is a killer for climate alarmism.” This debate involved science (what is the consensus and the fact that it evolves), different sources of energy, the role of markets, public policy, narratives of different groups, and, taking me back some years, the role of Enron in the climate change debate.

The debate captures something important. There’s the science and there’s how the science is being used to discuss how to address the problem. Embedded in this is the important “mitigation vs. adaptation” debate. It got spicey at times such as Jack Edstrom’s observation that “The lawsuit factories—Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and their ilk—manufacture fear with wild cataclysmic scenarios that are echoed by know-nothing news organizations.” And Sergey Zelvenskiy stating that “No narrative will turn people away from temperature-controlled homes and transportation” and so What's important is developing new energy sources, not spreading fear with scary stories.” Nils Gunther offered some robust pushback to positions taken by Bradley and his supporters. All in all, I found it a constructive debate and worth reading,

A number of interesting ideas were offered about how the narrative should be developed. Just to flag a few were suggestions to frame the narrative in geopolitical/competitive terms and making comparisons to behavior change from past public health issues (e.g., smoking bans). It was pointed out that the media could play a useful role, with the explicit or implicit view that it is actually contributing to the polarization since it has an embedded point of view. Kristina Wyatt (a good friend of mine) rightly observed that “we are in self- reinforcing echo chambers. My feeds on social media are mostly left-leaning so I don’t see the arguments made on the right. So I imagine the same is true on the right.” She asked, “How can we rewrite the conversation if we aren’t speaking with each other?”

Towards that end, Melanie Dubin made the useful suggestion for “journalists to find and report on riveting stories of positive change.” She inquired, “What if there were as many stories of solutions to tough problems as there were about the problems themselves?” I think such stories would address the “climate alarmism” narrative that is objectionable to so many and that such stories can be very bipartisan in nature. In the spirit of why I wrote this piece Matthew Vane Phillips offered that before trying to write the new “it’s worth getting genuinely curious and listening—especially to those with differing or opposing views. We seem to be in short supply of listening that isn’t in service of persuasion or strategy. Sometimes the most meaningful step is to simply seek to understand, without trying to convert. “

Finally, on the somewhat geeky side, so I’m skipping any detail here, Andrew Watson made the case for an important role accounting and auditing could play, a view endorsed by Mike Clark, who would add actuarial science. I know both of these guys and already had plans to talk to them before they comment on my piece.

In closing, I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to read my piece and offer their comments. I always learn from reading them.

As Dorothy and I continue this experiment, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What surprised you most in these comments? What gives you hope — or concern — about building a better climate narrative? Drop a comment, share your own ideas, or suggest where we should head next. Heavy lifting is always easier with more hands.