Human-caused climate change — including increased extreme weather and climate events — is here, according to the recently released United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 report, but the best way to communicate the concern is still debated.
The panel’s previous report in 2018 was widely reported by media as setting a 12-year deadline of 2030 to turn things around and start reducing the planet’s temperature before the Earth reaches a tipping point of no-return. This messaging was sometimes criticized, including by the 2018 IPCC report’s authors, as causing people to feel hopelessness, despair and disengagement.
However, a new University of Central Florida study in the journal Environmental Communication finds that this deadline messaging may be effective after all.
Read more at: University of Central Florida