Aristotle on the Ethics of Communicating Climate Change

Book section

The field of climate change communication (CCC) has recently emerged to address the gap between scientific knowledge of climate change and public motivation to respond. Psychologists in this field have offered helpful strategies for improving the effectiveness of CCC, but their empirical research tends to neglect the ethics of CCC. Philosophers have been more attentive to ethical communication, but they tend to focus on its cognitive dimensions and minimize the affective and social dimensions that contribute to effectiveness. As a result, studies that address ethics and effectiveness in tandem are lacking. This chapter fills this gap by recovering insights from Aristotle’s Rhetoric. By situating all communication within an ethical relationship between speaker and auditor, emphasizing the agency and judgement of auditors, and highlighting ways to build trust, Aristotle offers an art of rhetoric that can help climate scientists communicate both ethically and effectively.

Authors: Lamb, KM; Lane, MS

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2016-06-09
• DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744047.003.0012
• ISBN-10: 0198744048
• ISBN-13: 9780198744047
• Keywords: rhetoric; effectiveness; climate change communication; trust; ethics; Aristotle; SBTMR