How to talk to a climate denier ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from

BBC Learning English. I’m Sam.

And I’m Rob. When Sarah Ott was growing up

in Florida in the 1990s, she loved

playing in nature. She picked up litter

in the street and took it home to recycle.

But later, in college, Sarah became

surrounded by people in her community

who didn’t share her love of the

environment – people who didn’t

believe that climate change was real.

And slowly, Sarah started

to doubt it as well.

Climate deniers - people who don’t believe

that climate change is happening,

or that it isn’t caused by humans - make up

around nine percent of the American

population, according to some estimates.

Now, Sarah works as a climate campaigner

at the US National Centre for Science

Education, teaching children the science

behind climate change, but her journey

there was a difficult one, and she lost

many friends on the way.

In this programme, we’ll be discussing

climate deniers, and finding out how

to talk with people who doubt the

science of global warming. And as usual,

we’ll be learning some

new vocabulary as well.

But before that, I have a question

for you, Rob. Whatever climate deniers

think, there is strong agreement on the

issue among scientists on the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change, the IPCC. So, what percentage of

the world’s scientific community agree

that climate change is real? Is it:

a) 79 percent? b) 89 percent? or

c) 99 percent?

I’ll have a guess and I’ll say it’s 99 percent.

OK. I will reveal the answer later in

the programme, Rob. Marco Silva is

a climate disinformation reporter for

the BBC. He told BBC World Service

programme, The Climate Question, what

he’s learned about reporting on

the issue from around the world.

It’s quite important to make here a very

clear distinction between being wrong,

ill-informed about climate change

and being a full-blown climate denier.

A lot of people may not be very well

versed with the science, the facts of

climate change… to be honest, they can

at times be quite complex, quite dense.

Some people may have genuine

questions about the subject. So, with

information, with facts, those people

can be convinced. Climate deniers, though,

people who reject the basic facts of

climate change, are likely to be

more difficult to persuade.

Marco distinguishes a full-blown

climate denier - someone who is

completely committed to the idea,

from someone who is simply ill-informed,

meaning someone who knows less than

they should about a particular topic.

Marco thinks it’s possible persuade an

ill-informed person that climate change

is a fact, for example by sharing personal

stories of how of the weather has changed

in recent years, or by asking them why

they doubt the scientific evidence.

Full-blown climate deniers, on the other

hand, are much harder to persuade.

Here’s Marco Silva again, sharing some advice

on how best to talk to people about the

climate with BBC World Service

programme, The Climate Question.

A number of researchers and academics

have looked into exactly this topic before.

Professor Sander van der Linden,

professor of social psychology at the

University of Cambridge, is one of them.

He's been looking into this long and hard,

and when I spoke to him, he gave me a

couple of tips. For instance, don't challenge

a climate denier directly. Don't confront them

telling them that they're this or that,

throwing insults at them, that their beliefs

are wrong - that sort of attitude or strategy

is only likely to backfire. If you do that,

the chances are people are just going

to hold on to their views even more firmly.

Marco mentions Professor van der Linden,

a psychologist who has taken a long,

hard look at the issue of climate denial.

If you take a long, hard look at something,

you examine it very carefully in order

to improve it for the future.

Professor van der Linden advises us not

to challenge climate deniers directly, and

never to throw insults – to say offensive,

hurtful things directly to someone. This

approach is unlikely to work and will

probably backfire, or have the opposite

effect from that intended, such as

making that person’s opinion even stronger.

Instead, what’s needed is understanding

and empathy – realising that climate

deniers cannot control the life events that

led them to mistrust science; and the

patience to try to show them difference

between fact and fiction.

OK, it’s time to reveal the answer to your

question now, Sam - what percentage of

the global scientific community agree

that human-caused climate change

is real? And I guessed it was 99 percent.

And that was the correct answer, Rob!

The scientific evidence for a climate

emergency is overwhelming, leaving just

the question of what we do about it.

OK, let’s recap the vocabulary we’ve

learned from this programme on climate

deniers – people who do not accept

that climate change is real.

Someone who is ill-informed knows less

than they should about a particular topic.

The adjective full-blown means

completely committed or developed.

The idiom to take a long, hard look at

something means to examine something

very carefully in order to

improve it for the future.

If you throw insults, you say offensive,

hurtful things directly to someone.

And finally, if your actions backfire, they have

opposite effect from the one you intended.

Once again, our six minutes are up!

Bye for now!

Bye bye!