Getting Underneath Climate: Key Insights for Navigating Climate Polarization
How do you make sense of climate change? Can you trace the ways in which climate – and its many actions and policies – threads through your daily life? How does it shape what you feel part of, and what you fear losing?
This process of “sensemaking” is how we mentally, emotionally, and socially interpret climate change. It is a constant balancing act, a grappling where facts meet feelings and meaning takes shape.
To explore this ‘human layer’ of climate change, researchers Gail Hochachka, Meghan Wise, Wes Regan, and Robert Kozak gathered focus groups with climate actors from diverse sectors in Vancouver, BC. Respondents and researchers shared and discussed experiences engaging communities on climate change.
Most Canadians make sense of climate change on their own, without guidance. More often than not, this sensemaking happens in contested spaces, helping fuel distrust, polarization, and resistance to climate policy. Every day, we are reminded that we cannot ‘message ourselves’ out of this crisis.
And yet, against this backdrop, climate actors have important tools to offer to facilitate sensemaking. Together, we can guide and nurture support for climate policy, reduce polarization, and help Canadians find their way through the climate crisis.
Here, we have outlined some of the knowledge shared through this community of practice. We begin with three sets of tensions, or “axes of polarization”, that highlight how climate has become entangled in broader conflicts. Alongside these axes, recurring emotional themes highlight the human experience beneath policy debates.
The flavours of polarization
Geography.
In many rural communities, climate policies – bike lanes, taxes and pricing, bans on natural gas – are seen as outside interference from urban elites. On another scale, provinces increasingly view federal climate regulation as overreach that threatens local ways of life. These tensions map onto long histories of “insiders vs outsiders,” fueling polarization between regions, governments, and communities.
Along this axis, people experience fear and anger toward regulations seen as restrictive or incompatible with their existing worldviews. These feelings drive local resistance to perceived overstepping and top-down power dynamics.
Labour.
Across Canada, economies built on extractive industries are asked to transform to facilitate a transition toward low-carbon futures. For many, this raises questions about their livelihoods – many of which are going without clear answers.
What is the plan? What will happen to us? These questions drive feelings of loss and fear that the “just transition” is neither just nor fair, and that the impacts will fall disproportionately on workers and their families.
Industry-backed groups have amplified these anxieties by framing extractive jobs as under siege and rallying workers around a narrative of attack and defence. The result is mistrust between labour groups and climate actors, and a missed opportunity to co-create and pursue meaningful solutions.
Culture
Climate change has been swept into Canada’s wider culture wars, where economic fears merge with identity politics. Narratives pitting perceived elites against ordinary people are transforming climate policy into a proxy battle over values and belonging. This “lumping together” of issues magnifies polarization, making dialogue harder and casting climate action as a cultural threat.
This axis sparks fear, pride, and a tendency to blame others. Weaving through these emotions is a deep – and often unmet – need for belonging and purpose. In turn, many Canadians are vulnerable to messaging around how much they matter, uncertainty about the future, and fears of being left behind as the world changes.
Beyond divergent climate messaging
These divides are reinforced not just by political polarization but by distinct communication practices across the spectrum between ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ or ‘populist’ groups. By pooling together their experiences and knowledge, research participants explored patterns in how climate messaging gets created and resonates – or not – with audiences:
Progressive climate voices often rely on slower, nuanced messaging. They prioritize accuracy and inclusion, but tend to resonate only with like-minded audiences. Their networks are wide yet fragmented, which makes it difficult for messages to spread beyond insider circles. A common pitfall is over-explaining an issue or layering on complexity, which can obscure urgency or dilute emotional resonance.
Conservative/populist voices, in contrast, tend to communicate with clarity and force. Their messages are short, sharp, emotionally resonant, and easily repeated. Their narratives carry immediate relevance and spread quickly through lean but tightly connected networks. These often universalize grievances, making people feel part of a shared struggle.
The imbalance matters: progressive voices risk depth without reach, while populist voices can secure reach without depth. To close this gap, climate actors can try experimenting with more populist communications tactics that are a better fit for the pace and formatting of social media. These include:
Universalizing the benefits of change, or framing policies and practices in ways that feel relevant to ‘everyone’.
Simplifying and amplifying messages: using concise, shareable formats and learning from what content sparks engagement.
Building connective leadership by offering two-way engagement and creating spaces where audiences feel heard and supported.
Leading with empathy: recognizing and normalizing emotions such as fear, frustration, or worry about the climate and related policies.
On climate shadows and wayfinding
On top of countless other stressors and challenges, climate change is calling on us to change who we are. Part of this change involves letting go of old identities and worldviews, and stepping into unfamiliar roles. How should Canadians approach this blind jump? Who will we become in this new reality? How can we hold each other’s feelings around this vast unknown?
In previous research, psychologists have described a process where difficult emotions about climate change are repressed or ‘shadowed’ as a form of self-protection. These climate shadows can help us understand disproportional or knee-jerk reactions to climate policy. For example, public frustration with federal regulation often reflects shadowed feelings of powerlessness or being controlled. Acknowledging and validating these shadows is key to helping people reclaim feelings of agency, explore meaningful climate solutions, and imagine new and better futures.
We are still discovering and learning to navigate the human dimensions of climate change. To navigate these uncharted terrains, Canadians will need more than messaging. They need clear pathways, maps and markers, people there to relate, assist, and empathize, crossroads to share input and choose routes, and refuges to get through the storms ahead. Together, we can equip ourselves with the tools needed to facilitate sensemaking and help light the way forward.
Learn more:
Hochachka, Gail, Meghan Wise, Wes Regan, and Robert A. Kozak. 2025. “Emotional Turmoil: The Psycho-Social Uncertainty and Sensemaking Challenges of Climate Action.” Earth Stewardship 2(5): e70029. https://doi.org/10.1002/eas2.70029
Hochachka, G. M. Wise, and W. Regan (2025). ‘Sensemaking’ climate change: navigating policy, polarization and the culture wars. npj Clim. Action 4, 43 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00240-7