Americans aren't talking enough about climate—and the planet is paying the price. Here's what's causing the "climate silence."
It's axiomatic that you can't solve a problem if you don't admit it exists—and the best way to admit it exists is to talk about it. That's particularly true when it comes to climate change. For more than four decades, the state of the climate has been part of the national conversation—especially when severe weather events linked to a warming world such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and hurricanes occur. Between those emergencies, climate often retreats to a secondary issue—or less. A pair of studies—one from 2015, one from 2021— found that only 35% of Americans discuss climate change even occasionally. Since 2009, respondents to surveys have been more likely to say they discuss climate "rarely" or "never" than "occasionally" or "often." Now, a new study in PLOS Climate explores what the authors term the "climate silence" and offers insights into how to break it. Advertisement Advertisement Any public discussion of a political or social issue can be subject to what's known as a "spiral of silence." The less people hear a topic talked about, the less likely they are to bring it up themselves, which just leads to even fewer people discussing it and fewer still to raise the issue. The opposite is also true: the more that people discuss and debate a topic, the likelier it is that other people will join the conversation. In the case of climate change, the latter leads to what the researchers call a "proclimate social feedback loop." It's…