Harriet Fleetwood

• BSc (Hons) Psychology
• Is it time to change how we talk about climate change? The effect of uncertain climate change messages

The climate crisis is a foremost global issue. The “uncertain certainty” of climate change, knowing that climate change will have an effect but not what that will be or when, is set to irrevocably define the mindset and wellbeing of current and future generations. Recent research has shown that climate change causes distress and anxiety. Other investigations have outlined how to best communicate climate change and currently recommend against communicating uncertainty for fear of promoting inaction and dismissive attitudes. This study aimed to bring these strands together by investigating how uncertain climate change messages affect climate anxiety. The research found that anxious responses to climate change messages were not a result of a message’s uncertainty. Instead, other factors such as socio-demographics were found to better explain anxious responses to climate change messages. In short, communicating climate change is a complicated and nuanced issue which requires continual investigation.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Project supervisor: Professor Mark Freeston