Conversations about climate change can quickly go south. Here are 6 ways to make them better

Conversations about climate change can get really uncomfortable, really quickly, whether they're happening in a meeting room or at your family's annual summer barbecue.

It's enough to make even those who are really concerned about the problem want to steer clear of the topic. 

But those chats between colleagues, family members and friends are actually really essential, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

Research shows that scientists are "fairly trusted messengers, but we're not number one," Hayhoe told What on Earth guest host Falen Johnson. "The most trusted messenger on climate change, according to the social science, is people we know — friends, family, neighbours, colleagues."

Here's how expert facilitators and climate scientists and advocates say we can apply principles from conflict resolution to make those climate conversations go better, and get more of us on the same page about the things we need to do to slow and adapt to climate change.

Hayhoe said that polling shows "the vast majority" of people in Canada and the U.S. care about climate, but that only 50 per cent ever talk about it.

But Samantha Slade, founder of Montreal-based Percolab Co-op, says to solve climate change, we need to learn to communicate in ways that bring us closer together and help us collaborate. 

The network of research labs hosts "conflict cafes" where participants can bring the tricky issues they're dealing with and work through them with a group. 

"One of the practices … is living with discomfort and the idea that discomfort is healthy and normal," said Slade. "And if we want to do the deep transitions that our world needs, part of that is we don't always have to be comfortable all the time because deep change can feel uncomfortable. And that's OK."

Your uncle, who has a lot of friends who work in the oil patch, may be skeptical about what a green transition is going to mean for jobs. But there's likely something in your shared experience where your values align, says Hayhoe, a Canadian currently working as a professor at Texas Tech university in Lubbock, Texas.

"These conversations are best approached through empathy, through trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and also through focusing on what we have in common rather than what divides us," said Hayhoe, who has a PhD in atmospheric science.

For example, the sound engineer she met recording the audio version of her book Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World approached her with some skeptical questions on climate change.

Rather than starting to pepper him with facts, Hayhoe says she asked him how long he'd lived in the town where they both reside.

"Pretty soon he was telling me about how he grew up fishing, and now he takes his grandchildren fishing. And I said, 'Do you feel like things have changed?' And then he was telling me all about how the lake was getting warmer and it was clogged with algae and the fish weren't the same."