One of the most surprising things I’ve experienced as an adult happened last year, during my first sessions at my university’s debating society. With a random topic and assigned side, you had only 15 minutes to prepare. Yet, every single time the debate ended, I felt my side objectively had more potential. After ten sessions, I realized: “Did I get lucky enough to draw the stronger side ten times, or is the opposite happening?”
This was my first reality check with cognitive bias.
If 15 minutes of preparation can distort my mind, imagine the power of a political bubble over years. In global politics, this is exactly what stalls goals like the UN’s SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) [1]. Polarization erodes the public trust that strong institutions rely on before green policies can even launch. Green issues shrink into a tug-of-war where one side proposes and the other instinctively resists. But ecological survival shouldn’t belong to a single political wing.
Overcoming this in extreme polarization requires debating within the other’s value framework, anchoring arguments in priorities they already hold rather than dragging them to your turf.
It became evident when watching a simulation video of São Paulo’s main river a century ago, when it was clean enough to swim in. The comments were flooded with reactionaries romanticizing this untouched past. Curiously, the very people who would typically protest ecological regulations were there, dreaming of a clean, green river. Their resistance is rarely against nature itself, but rather a reaction to political jargon and partisan tribalism. The hidden deficit in today’s hyper-polarized climate is a lack of strategic communication [2].
That is where I find my agency. As an exchange student at the University of Exeter, which has already cut 45% of its direct emissions since 2005 and targets net-zero by 2030 [3], I will bring this same argumentative logic into the local debating society, communication classes, and the wider Exeter and BUTEX communities, documenting my journey on Instagram to teach both British and Brazilians how to discuss environmental issues without triggering defensive barriers.
I do believe that small individual acts matter. Personally, I will minimize my physical footprint by walking across Exeter’s highly walkable campus, relying on the National Rail network [4] for longer UK trips, and buying second-hand essentials from local charity shops [5] instead of purchasing new ones. However, while reducing our individual footprint grows linearly, our positive impact can scale exponentially.
By helping to dismantle our chronic inability to communicate without triggering defenses under polarization through this Instagram content, I believe that we will help to generate long-term value by sparking dialogues that neither I nor anyone could ever imagine happening. This is how we will finally unlock discussions that should never have become obstacles in the first place.
References
1 – https://sdgs.un.org/goals
2 – https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/global-warmings-six-americas-a-review/
3 – https://www.exeter.ac.uk/about/strategy2030/ourprogress/greener/
4 – https://www.nationalrail.co.uk
5 – https://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/second-hand-september/
