Finally, some hope. Communicating systemic aspects of climate-change mitigation

Climate communication, including from museums, often advocates individual lifestyle changes, and while these are necessary, the biggest emissions reductions will come from the systemic transition to renewable energy sources. The importance of this systemic change and its attainability has been under-communicated in the public discourse, although bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have increased their focus on it. We tested a message focusing on systemic aspects and actions that individuals can do to accelerate the renewable energy transition against a message advocating lifestyle change and a neutral message on the science of climate change. The neutral message elicited the highest levels of negative emotions, whereas the systemic message elicited higher levels of hope. These higher hope levels mediated increased behavioral intentions for doing the suggested system-aimed actions and for making lifestyle changes. Our results suggest that museums and climate communicators should prominently feature systemic aspects of climate change mitigation.