About 15 years ago, I was at a hair salon with my best friend getting ready to attend a concert for her birthday. My friend had been a regular with this stylist (let’s call her Laura) for over 5 years, but this was my first time visiting her. As is the way with barbershops and hair salons, once you sit in the chair you know you are in for a unique conversation experience. While your hair is cut, there is a give-and-take of questions, answers, gossip, and lived experience that is wide-ranging, often hilarious, sometimes serious, but overall cheerful. Since Laura and I didn’t know each other, she started our conversation with questions about where I lived, what kind of music I liked (we were going to an Adele concert), and what I did for work. I happily answered and chatted about all these topics, until I hit a completely unexpected, work-related road bump that momentarily left me speechless.

I am a climate change communication specialist. I’ve spent years learning evidence-based, thoroughly tested techniques for talking about climate change with anyone and everyone, in any situation. Not only do I give presentations about climate change all over the country to audiences from teens to policymakers, I also train people how to have conversations with their neighbors, family members, and co-workers about climate disruption and what we can do about it. I talk climate for a living; I even wear t-shirts that say, “Ask Me about Climate Change” So, what did Laura say that stunned me into silence? 

When I told Laura about my work with climate education, she replied with, “Well, I’ve heard that climate change is natural so I’m not worried about it because there’s nothing we can really do.” Here was the perfect opportunity to put my years of training into practice! I had even carefully crafted an “elevator speech” to respond to this very statement. I had, in fact, responded to this comment many times at the aquarium where I worked. But I had never considered how I would react to this situation in the world outside the “fishbowl”. I don’t even remember what I said exactly. All I remember was feeling flustered, stumbling awkwardly through my answer, and quickly changing the subject. At that moment, I was deeply disappointed in myself and wished I could turn back time to make it better.

I thought about the experience for months afterward. Why did I freeze? How could I miss such an opportunity? Was I a hypocrite for teaching others to do what I couldn’t when the time came? I felt awful, and I did not want to end up in that situation again. So, I started practicing a one sentence “automatic” response that would give me a chance to steady myself and grab the tools I have for positive, informative, and constructive climate conversations. The phrase I chose was, “It’s interesting that you say that.”

Most people living in the United States, about 72% of us in fact (see Climate Change in the American Mind), believe that climate change is happening right now. But only 14% of us hear people we know talk about climate change once a month or more frequently. Because humans are a social species, when we don’t hear people we know talk about climate change, we don’t want to talk about it either. Talking about it does not seem like “something we do”, so we don’t do it. And since we don’t do it, the people we know don’t do it, and around we go. Climate communicators call this the “spiral of silence.”

To break this spiral, we need to choose to talk about our concerns for our climate and what we can do about it. The more we talk to each other, the more normal concern for our climate, and taking action for climate resilience, seems.

After a few weeks of practice, “It’s interesting that you say that,” became my natural response in a variety of conversations. I even began bringing up climate change while chatting in line at Starbucks or waiting at the doctor's office. All these years later, I can link almost any subject back to climate change starting with that simple statement, “It’s interesting that you say that.” I’ve even used it with my own hair stylist, and had a positive, productive conversation about both of our concerns and what both of us were doing to address climate disruption.

If you’d like to learn more about our changing climate, effective ways to talk about it, and actions you can take with your community, consider taking a UC Climate Stewards course. We’d love to welcome you to our conversation.

This article was inspired by the Re.Climate article, “Visible, Actionable, Normal—How to Break the Silence on Climate Change Today.” While that article was written for a Canadian audience, every point made in the article reflects research done and evidence shown about people living in the United States.