Making climate change meaningful: Narrative dissonance and the gap between knowledge and action

Abstract

Decades of widespread knowledge about climate change have not translated into adequate action to address population health and health equity impacts in Canada. Researchers find that perceptions and interpretations mediate engagement. Exploring climate change engagement thus involves inquiry into contextual experience. This qualitative study employs narrative methodology to interpret the meaning of climate change among community leaders in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, age 20-40 (n=10). Climate change narratives are explored both structurally and thematically. A model was developed to organize results and to describe concepts of fidelity and dissonance within participant narratives. Findings suggest that knowledge of climate change and personal motivation to act do not preclude narrative dissonance, which serves as a barrier to a meaningful personal response. Dissonance can result where internal and external barriers mediate mobilization at moments in the plot: (1) moving from knowledge of the challenge to a sense of agency about it; (2) from agency to a sense of responsibility to choose to address it; (3) from responsibility to a sense of capacity to produce desirable outcomes despite contextual challenges; and (4) from capacity to a moral sense of activation in context. Without narrative fidelity, meaningful mobilization can be hindered. A narrative model is useful for exploring climate change engagement and highlights opportunities for population health to reframe climate change in a mobilizing way. By framing climate change narratives with emotional and moral logic, population health could help young leaders overcome internal and external barriers to engagement.