The Need to Focus More on Climate Change Communication and Incorporate More Systems Approaches

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Abstract

Society is at an inflection point—both in terms of climate change and the amount of data and computational resources currently available. Climate change has been a catastrophe in slow motion with relationships between human activity, climate change, and the resulting effects forming a complex system. However, to date, there has been a general lack of urgent responses from leaders and the general public, despite urgent warnings from the scientific community about the consequences of climate change and what can be done to mitigate it. Further, misinformation and disinformation about climate change abound. A major problem is that there has not been enough focus on communication in the climate change field. Since communication itself involves complex systems (e.g. information users, information itself, communications channels), there is a need for more systems approaches to communication about climate change. Utilizing systems approaches to really understand and anticipate how information may be distributed and received before communication has even occurred and adjust accordingly can lead to more proactive precision climate change communication. The time has come to identify and develop more effective, tailored, and precise communication for climate change.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the City University of New York (CUNY) in support of the Pandemic Response Institute (PRI), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences as part of the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) network under grant R01GM127512, NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the NIH through Award Number U54TR004279, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) via grant 1R01HS028165, and by the National Science Foundation award 2054858. Statements in the manuscript do not necessarily represent the official views of, or imply endorsement by, the National Institute of Health, the US Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ, CUNY, or the PRI.