This column is adapted from Chris Hatch's Zero Carbon Newsletter. Sign up here for columns — and a rundown of stories from CNO and elsewhere — every Sunday in your inbox.

“Why is no one talking about it anymore?” asked the guy cutting my hair a few weeks ago. He meant climate change, as you’ve probably guessed, and there was a sharp edge to his tone, uncharacteristic for the chatty barber. He was worked up because his parents have been struggling to get the ingredients they need for the stall they run in a local food court. They can’t get the right peppers anymore; other ingredients aren’t reliably available or priced for high-end restaurants. The pepper problem cuts a particularly deep cultural wound. And don’t get him started about coffee. 

It’s blindingly obvious to him and his parents that this is all happening because of droughts and floods around the world. Their suppliers tell them so. Their extended families are living through the heat waves and inundations. And, while they don’t have much time for abstractions like climate policy or energy transitions, they’re quietly exasperated that things seem to be spiraling out of control while people are talking about it less and less.

They have every reason to be worried about their livelihoods. And they’re not wrong about the blanket of silence muffling climate concern. But he said another thing that really stuck with me — he felt I was one of the only people he “can even talk to about any of this.”

I couldn’t muster much reassurance on the outlook for droughts and heat waves, but I could assure him that there’s no need to stifle his fears — the vast majority of his clients share them. Tens of millions of people around us are thinking and worried about climate change. And the fact that his clients don’t bring it up is all the more reason for him to do so. In fact, more than 30 million Canadians admit to being concerned or very concerned, according to recent polls. Almost half of us say we find ourselves thinking about how to tackle it in any given week, or more frequently than that.

But here’s the rub: just like my exasperated barber, we all think our neighbours aren’t thinking about climate change much at all. Some researchers call that a “perception gap.” In universitese, they call it “pluralistic ignorance,” which sounds a bit like a disease, appropriately enough, because it does cause a nasty kind of infection.

That infection results in a “spiral of silence” across society, says David Coletto, one of Canada’s top pollsters and the head of Abacus Data, which conducted surveys and focus groups for Re.Climate. 

While it’s true that the climate has dropped off the topmost list of immediate priorities, and often feels like part of a broader “polycrisis” infecting our age, a new survey of more than 4,000 Canadians shows 75 per cent are still worried about it.

Coletto points to a multi-step process where people first “scan the room.” We’re social creatures after all. If the room is quiet, we start underestimating what’s normal. “Well, if I'm not hearing about it, especially from my political leaders, especially from my community leaders, especially from my employer, people in my life that I take cues from … I assume bringing it up is going to get eye rolls or conflict,” Coletto says.

The spiral continues and the issue goes quiet, even if a supermajority of us are actually harbouring stifled angst. While it’s true that the climate has dropped off the topmost list of immediate priorities, and often feels like part of a broader “polycrisis” infecting our age, Coletto’s survey of more than 4,000 Canadians found that a full 75 per cent of us say we’re still worried about climate change. 

And so he advises people to break the silence: “lead with social proof,” he says. “You can be worried about affordability and still care about climate change.”

Louise Comeau, the long-time climate advocate and social scientist who helped design the research, concurs: “how important is it to know that we’re not alone?” she asks, before giving the technical answer herself: “Super important.” 

In a period when politicians and the media are going silent, conversations between real people become “more important than ever,” says Comeau. One organization she works with, Seniors for Climate, is launching a new campaign called Break Through the Climate Silence: Creating Space for Action.

The survey uncovered some other striking findings bubbling beneath the silence. A whopping 70 per cent of the public feel more proud about the idea of Canada as a renewable energy superpower than a fossil fuel one.

That desired direction for the country is surprisingly widespread. Well over 70 per cent say they’re more proud to become a renewable superpower in Quebec and all the Atlantic provinces. Solid majorities agree across the Prairies: 67 per cent in Manitoba, 60 per cent in Saskatchewan, and 56 per cent in Alberta.

And, while the politicians may have gone quiet on climate, the public still expects action from them. Seventy per cent say they want the government to regulate polluters causing climate change. And two-thirds say leaders should keep their climate promises even if it’s difficult.

That’s the good news for those worried about peppers and other living things. But there are significant blind spots as well. Misinformation and petro-identity erode some of the overarching good sense. One-third of Canadians say the effects of climate change are “seriously exaggerated.” A larger cohort disagrees. But that larger group is only 46 per cent of the public, while one-in-five won’t commit in either direction. 

And other polling reveals a continued resistance to reckoning with the most basic facts about our climate predicament. You might expect British Columbians to have a decent grasp of the issue after so many decades of pipeline battles and climate politics, but barely half of Lotuslanders correctly identify the burning of fossil fuels as the primary cause of climate change. 

Connecting those dots even silenced my chatty barber for a few moments. The LNG projects, the gas in our cars … those all impact his parents’ peppers? I was dumbfounded by my own blindspots as well. I’d never considered the power of peppers even though he’s been telling me what he cares about for years. And he is absolutely willing to upend geopolitics over chilis. For him, the penny dropped over peppers. Your next conversation may differ. But everyone wants to protect what they love.

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