Summary
The Center for Climate Change Communication (Mason 4C) develops and applies social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change.
As a result of human activity – primarily the burning of fossil fuels – the earth’s climate is becoming dangerously disrupted and destabilized. Our mission is to develop and apply social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change. To achieve this goal, our center engages in three broad activities: we conduct unbiased communication research; we help government agencies, civic organizations, professional associations, and companies apply social science research to improve their public engagement initiatives; and we train students and professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to improve public engagement with climate change.
News
The tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are going to deploy a tremendous amount of clean energy in America. Permitting reform is needed to get that clean energy to population centers, and a carbon border adjustment mechanism in needed to achieve worldwide action on climate.
Our clean energy friends on the EcoRight (a balance to the Environmental Left) are to be congratulated on a great success. Much of their agenda has been accomplished in the substantial tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Had those tax credits been contained in a free-standing bill, there might have been Republican votes for those provisions. After all, what’s there not to like about reducing overall taxation?
Those of us on the EcoRight who support a carbon tax have set our sights on worldwide action on climate change. We celebrate the deployment of clean energy in America, and we hope that early adoption here might lead to cost reductions that make clean energy technologies affordable around the globe. But we’re aware that American tax incentives only alter the economics of American firms. Foreign firms can’t avail themselves of those credits. Because of that, the clean energy technology that’s going to be deployed here might not be deployed around the world. We’ll have cleaner air, fewer asthma cases, fewer hospitalizations, and longer life expectancies here in prosperous America, but we won’t yet be solving climate change. Alas, the devilish thing about climate change is that carbon pollution anywhere is climate change everywhere.
About
Research
We conduct unbiased social science research to identify opportunities to enhance public understanding of and engagement with climate change. Examples include:
Our Climate Change in the American Mind audience research project (with Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication) identified six distinct segments of the American public – known as Global Warming’s Six Americas. We’ve developed tools to enable organizations to assess the Six Americas composition of their audience.
Our research on public understanding of the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change yielded an important new answer to the question: What about climate change is most worth knowing? This finding has been used to inform several notable public education initiatives.
Our surveys of TV weathercasters revealed that many of these broadcasters are eager to educate their viewers about the local impacts of climate change in their community, but face challenges in doing so.
Our surveys of several American medical societies found that many physicians are seeing patients’ health being harmed by climate change. We also learned that many physicians feel the medical community should advocate to limit climate change.
Our research on the impact of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ showed that he has helped many Americans to see climate change in a new light: as a moral issue.
Training
We train undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and working professionals in climate change communication research and public engagement methods. Examples include:
We have trained well over 100 undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows to conduct research and enhance climate change communication public engagement programs. Many of these former students are now playing important roles in public engagement efforts around the nation, including teaching at leading universities.
At Mason, students can get masters and doctoral degrees in a wide range of disciplines – including science communication, public health, environmental science & policy, public policy, and conflict analysis and resolution– while focusing their studies on issues related to climate change communication.
In partnership with the National Park Service and the Urban Ecology Research Learning Alliance, every summer since 2012 we have operated a climate change communication internship program. Over two dozen undergraduate and graduate students have been placed in national parks in the National Capital Region to collaborate with park staff in developing education programs that illustrate the impacts and risks faced by the parks as a result of climate change.
Program on Climate and Health has collaborated with others to train several hundred physicians, nurses and other clinical professionals in how to successfully communicate the health relevance of climate change – including its current health impacts, and the many immediate health benefits of transitioning to clean energy.
Engagement
We develop and test new approaches for enhancing public understanding of and engagement with climate change. We also partner with government agencies, associations, and businesses in developing and testing their public engagement initiatives. Examples include:
Climate Matters is a comprehensive educational resource program for broadcast meteorologists developed in collaboration with Climate Central, American Meteorological Society, NOAA, NASA and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
Our Program on Climate and Health has organized the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health to educate and engage physicians, nurses and other clinical health professionals in responding to climate change.
The Energy and Enterprise Initiative (renamed republicEN in 2015) – led by former six-term Republican Congressman Bob Inglis (4th District, South Carolina) – seeks to facilitate engagement among politically conservative “free-market climate realists.” In 2015, Bob was given the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his “visionary and courageous” leadership on climate change.
The Climate Communication Consortium of Maryland, established in 2012, is a platform to organize, enhance and test public engagement efforts in Maryland. It has grown to include over 35 organizations in the public, civic and educational sectors.
Members of our team played key roles in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), a congressionally mandated assessment of current and projected future impacts of climate change in the United States. Ed Maibach served on the federal advisory committee that produced the assessment, and co-chaired the committee’s Engagement & Communication Working Group, and Connie Roser-Renouf served on a National Academy of Science committee that peer-reviewed the report.
We have advised on the development of – and in some cases helped evaluate – public engagement activities conducted by many leading organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alliance for Climate Education, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, The Climate Museum (New York City), and other museums, zoos and aquaria.
