Moral Imagination in Climate Communication

Abstract

There is an urgent need for climate action by people in the richer parts of the world, for example, politicians and producers, but also ordinary citizens. Many people are concerned about climate change but remain mainly inactive, many are disengaged and some continue to dismiss climate change. The present study investigates how moral imagination can be used in communication at various societal levels to overcome obstacles to climate action. Communication is not sufficient to solve the problem of inaction. Binding political agreements at a global level are of key importance. However, communication improved by moral imagination is necessary in undertaking such coercive measures by democratic means. A three-step model for attaining this goal is proposed. The first step is to use moral imagination to discern what is morally relevant in the specific communicative situation. The second step is to use moral imagination to put oneself as communicator empathetically in the place of the recipient to understand the recipient’s specific obstacles to climate action. The third step is to use moral imagination to envision the full range of possible responses to the specific obstacles and to determine which response could be the most effective. It is explored how moral imagination in a concrete way can be used in responding to obstacles by applying the imaginative tools of framing, narrative, metaphor and prototype structure.

Keywords: climate change; cognitive science; communication; ethics; moral imagination