How to talk about climate change and the problem with doomerism

What fosters more apathy, doom or optimism? Obviously it is not as simple as that but the conversation about how best to mobilise ‘climate action’ sometimes suggests it is. Evidence tends to support the need for an attitude that is both realistic and ‘can-do’, grounded in morals, values and emotion. This piece of research, based on “a global megastudy conducted on a sample of 59,440 people from 63 countries” finds that “doom and gloom messaging” encourages information sharing but not action, and that “messages with moral foundations yielded the most motivation for positive climate action”. Whether the actions are sufficiently transformative is not covered. (Also see)