New Episode of Resources Radio: “Public Attitudes toward Climate Activists, with Nathaniel Geiger”

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “Public Attitudes toward Climate Activists, with Nathaniel Geiger.”

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Nathaniel Geiger, an assistant professor of communication science at Indiana University. Geiger discusses his research on how the public responds to climate change communication and activism. Geiger and Raimi review the recent history of advocacy on climate change; how current movements like the youth-led climate strike might shape public attitudes toward climate policy and toward the activists themselves; and how climate communicators can effectively reach audiences who otherwise might not engage in the climate change conversation.

Listen here.

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• “If you're somebody who's trying to discourage taking action on climate change, one way that you might have to demobilize action would be to say, ‘Oh, these people who are promoting action are bad, nefarious people and they're doing this for bad reasons.’ And I think that really falls apart when you're seeing teenagers, young people being the people that are the standard bearers for this stuff. It just doesn't work to call them bad people or saying that they're manipulative.”―Nathan Geiger (15:13)
• “I think it's important to be honest with people and tell them [climate change] is a dire situation … But I also think it's important to balance that message with a particular sort of positive message, in the sense of actually talking about how people like them can get engaged and actually make a difference. I think one of the biggest issues with climate change is that it's seen as this huge issue, that it’s this global issue, and a lot of people feel powerless to be able to do anything meaningful about it.”―Nathan Geiger (22:02)
• “[A]ny good communication effort starts with knowing one's audience … A lot of us, when we're having these conversations with people that disagree with us, politically or otherwise, our first inclination is to think about what motivates us and try to persuade the other person based on what motivates us. And obviously from a communication strategy, we should be focusing on not what motivates us as people who are deeply passionate about the environment, but we should be focusing on what motivates our audience.”―Nathan Geiger (25:02)