In the autumn of 2014, I was sitting in a tiny shed at a writing residency in Point Reyes, Northern California. I was there to write my book about the psychology of facing planetary crises. One particularly warm afternoon, I was looking out at Tomales Bay, teeming with bird life, when my phone rang with an unknown Washington DC number. 

Grateful for any distraction, I took the call. 

The fast-talking man on the other end of the line introduced himself as a senior advisor to the Republican Party. Let’s call him “Bob” (not his real name). A seasoned messaging expert, Bob’s specialty was creating messaging for the party on hot-button issues — the kind that tend to fracture and polarize our collective conversations: healthcare, social security, tax reform, foreign policy. Then he’d brief senior members of the Republican Party on what he’d tested, based on extensive focus groups, interviews and live dial testing. 

A conservative philanthropist — who, he quickly explained, wished to remain anonymous — had approached him for help in developing compelling messaging about tackling climate change… for conservatives. Who were also climate skeptics. 

Bob, a lifelong Republican, confessed that he was feeling increasing anxiety and urgency about our global climate crisis, and he desperately wanted to help engage his party on the subject. This project felt like a way to address his existential dread by doing what he did very well: using finely honed research methods for crafting effective messaging strategies on tough topics, the most polarizing issues in our country.

The remit was daunting, however. He started asking around for guidance, and a number of people suggested I may be able to help. As a psychologist focused on cracking the code on climate action, he’d sought me out to help thread this particularly tricky needle. 

After explaining the scope, he paused. Then he asked,”So, what do you think?”

I felt excited, surprised… and suspicious.

Even so, I asked when we could get started.

Even as it seems the U.S. is accelerating backwards on climate action, what if we are radically under-estimating our capacity for real social change? In recent days, I have been thinking a lot about this question, and the tools that I’m convinced can unlock what we may believe is unthinkable. Namely, moving from a “yell, tell and sell” theory of change, where people often shut down, turn away and deny, to one of guiding people with very different views towards taking steps to address climate change. 

To do this, we have to be open to revising our own theories of change. We have to be able to listen and acknowledge what millions of people are feeling and saying: that we are confused, overwhelmed, scared, angry, and threatened. No amount of cheerleading, educating and ‘righting’ at people is going to change that. People respond neurologically to being heard, respected and yes, redirected to what is in our joint best interest. What I am describing is an evidence-based, scientifically sound approach to shifting mindsets, hearts and behaviors. It is also reflected in the fields of social neuroscience, relational psychology and motivational interviewing in the public health sector. As the psychiatrist Dr Daniel Siegel says, “name it to tame it.”

As a former academic psychosocial researcher-turned-practitioner, I had been applying my training to strategies for protecting and caring for our planet well before I received Bob’s call. It turns out that those years of in-depth training are very relevant for existential issues such as climate change, energy transition and environmental protection. Therefore, when Bob contacted me, I knew that his team would need to approach their research differently. These issues were charged, complex, scary, big and existential. I wanted to get beyond the usual trope in progressive circles that “people don’t care” or are simply ignorant. 

We started with training the team on how to get past the party’s usual talking points, and focus instead on how voters were actually thinking and feeling about the issue. I guided them in the practice of attunement: being present, putting one’s own reactivity and agenda aside, and listening between the lines of what people are voicing. This approach, informed by trauma researchers, motivational interviewing, psychosocial researchers and clinicians, pays attention to what people are saying — or not saying — as well as the underlying mood of the conversation, so as to tune into people’s underlying feelings, conflicts, and dilemmas.

Most importantly, attention is paid to ensuring people feel safe from attack, judgement or pressure. People can sense a mile away if we have an agenda. We go out of our way to signal that we are curious to learn about their experience and perceptions. Instead of the usual “How much do you agree/ disagree with X statement” questions commonly used in policy messaging research, the team courageously agreed to offer open-ended prompts that are meant to evoke more stream of consciousness answers, such as: 

“What comes to mind when you hear X statement?”

“What associations do you have with Y topic?”

“What do you already know about Z topic? What have your experiences been?”

“Can you say more?”

And then: 

“This is what I hear you saying. Did I get that right?” They’d reflect back what they heard. 

The researchers would then pause, listen and intentionally create space for people to reflect — even if that meant gritting their teeth through the awkward moments of silence that most of us so often rush to fill.

I guided them to pay attention to what I call The Three A’s. Anxieties, Ambivalence (i.e. competing priorities), and Aspirations. 

I call this “cracking the code” on climate psychology. 

Using this method, the team conducted more than two dozen one-on-one interviews with a variety of conservatives: young adults, women, men, Hispanics, and Caucasians around the United States. They interviewed people who fall into a category of what the Yale Center on Climate Communication terms “soft skeptics,” as well as “hard skeptics.”

I was reminded of the doctoral research I conducted in Wisconsin in the late 2000s, where I focussed on how people were relating to issues facing the Great Lakes. There, I had discovered that many people, including those who identified as conservatives and not engaged in environmental protection or climate, had unexpectedly profound feelings about issues ranging from toxic contamination to biodiversity loss, which came forward as I listened, with no judgment or preexisting agenda. 

Similarly, the interviews the team conducted uncovered lots of strong emotions about these big issues.

People felt scared of the specter of climate threats, if in fact real (several noted that “if the science was conclusive,” they’d take action, quit their jobs, and so on). They were aggrieved about perceived hypocrisy among climate advocates (“Al Gore flies around the globe, telling people to do what he is not willing to do!”); and overwhelmed by a profound sense of powerlessness and resignation (“There’s not much I could do about it, anyway, even if the issues were real”). 

There was a strong current of underlying despair about the possibility that much about our cherished ways of life would need to change. And in response to this despair, I observed a brittle, rigid and harsh rejection of climate science. 

Striking, too, was that people (yes: conservative climate skeptics) also had lots of ideas about solutions. They felt strongly about empowering individuals to innovate, using the power of the free market system, rather than locating the responsibility in government. And they recognized that this innovation would be linked to job creation and economic growth.

Perhaps the most significant finding to me, was that personal empowerment was important to respondents — they wanted to be part of the solution. They were tired of feeling patronized and spoken down to. They resented the tone of climate messaging and felt it was not taking into account the welfare of those who are most vulnerable. Particularly when it comes to transitioning out of extractive practices and energy sectors. 

They could not tolerate being patronized or treated as if they did not care about what’s at stake.

Taking all of this in, without judgment, we set about crafting different kinds of messaging that were attuned to these feelings. We practiced what is called “reflective listening” and acknowledging those Three A’s as an experiment. For many people, these messy, complex feelings simply were not being named or acknowledged. We wanted to know what would happen if we openly acknowledged these feelings in a political message about climate change. I had not seen that done before. 

We used what I introduced to Bob and his team as a “lateral” approach versus a “frontal” approach, something I had learned in my psychosocial research training. Far less effective was to raise the problem directly (frontal) which tended to elicit knee-jerk rejection and tuning out. Instead, we emphasized the (lateral) shared values of caring for and loving nature, and what makes America so remarkable — and the potential costs of losing these gifts. We spoke openly to the Anxieties, Ambivalence and Aspirations. 

After much trial and error, a script was tested across several groups of conservative Americans, using live dial testing — in which viewers, using dials, respond to what words resonate and don’t —  to obtain moment-to-moment feedback. The script acknowledged their appreciation for nature and wide-open spaces, the great outdoors, and that humans have not always been the stewards of creation we could be. We spoke to their aspirations of taking action, without demanding more from the working class than we expect from the nation’s leaders.

To our amazement, the messaging actually worked. With astonishment, we watched the dial test line on the screen move up, in response to people turning the dial on what resonates — as we named and acknowledged these Three A’s (people especially loved calling out Al Gore). 

The groups resonated with – and responded positively to – messaging that openly affirmed and acknowledged their anxieties, ambivalence, and conflicts, as well as their deepest held aspirations for a healthy and sustainable world. They wanted to be included and listened to when it came to these profound existential threats.

Bob shared these findings with the Republican Party, urging them to use this messaging in the upcoming election. He urged politicians to see that their constituents actually cared about the future of our world, quality of life for our future generations, and wanted to address these issues with ingenuity and innovation, without harming the most vulnerable. 

Unfortunately, the leaders Bob shared these insights with, were not willing to make this leap of faith. The messaging failed to make it onto the convention floor, key policies were not passed, and today, we can all see polarization on this issue is even more entrenched, and existential fears are more potent than ever.

What does this mean for us, now, today?

At this particular moment, it seems the gulf is impossibly massive between those who care about our planet, our species, our web of life, protection of those most vulnerable, and ensuring our planet is healthy and thriving for future generations — and those hell-bent on accelerating the most devastating and damaging practices. 

This can lead to a profound despair that words cannot touch or describe. I know. I feel it, and live with this every day.

However, based on my experiences working with people around the world, including large organizations, leaders and teams — often involving deep listening and applying the skills of motivational interviewing, reflective listening, psychosocial methods and actual conversations — I know that under the surface of resistance, denial and contraction, is a lot of insecurity and fear.

I know that insecurity and fear makes us self-preservation focused. And this is what I see playing out at scale. 

I also know that when we create the right conditions, attune to these underlying currents, speak to them, give space for acknowledging and giving our deepest fears oxygen, we can actually gain some traction. This is the basic premise of a trauma-informed and emotionally intelligent approach. 

There are no easy solutions here, but I want to encourage us to consider how we can weave these practices into every aspect of our change-making work.

It is time for us to shift from “righting versus guiding.” 

Whether we are working at high-level strategy, on the ground in our community, actively influencing, organizing, showing up at our jobs, we can foster conditions that create safety and the ability to name our fears. This also has to do with how we convene. We need to partner and involve people who have psychological training into our climate work, our gatherings, our elite meetings and strategies. We need to invest in training, skill-building and resources when it comes to these capacities. 

The question is: Will we leverage them? 

Dr. Renée Lertzman is a leading climate psychologist, strategist, advisor, and trainer. For over 20 years, she has partnered across sectors and political affiliations, with communities, leaders and organizations around the world to drive impact. She is the founder of ProjectInsideOut.net, a nonprofit initiative to scale psychological tools for planetary action that offers programs and workshops. You can learn more about her work at reneelertzman.com.