All Hands on Deck - Communicating Climate Change

Working Paper No. 31

Climate change. Y’all know the deal, I don’t think I need to explain it. This is a global community, so no doubt many of you are facing some of the more immediate effects already. At the same time, you’re strategists, leaders, advisors, etc., so those very effects, along with many other challenges associated with global climate change (the pandemic, supply chain issues, infrastructure adaptation, new legislation, shifting consumer demand, and so on) will have been beeping loudly on your radars for a while now.

But as the algorithms continue to swell and burp headlines at us about the ongoing importance of the 1.5-degrees-of-global-warming limit, activists throwing soup at art, the island nation of Tuvalu going fully digital as it recedes beneath real-world waves, and the continued refusal of world leaders to commit to ending our reliance on fossil fuels, it seems like as good a time as any to consider something that I’ve been talking to a lot of brilliant thinkers and practitioners about recently – the role of communication in contributing to solving this whole climate change thing in the first place.

We all play a role in shaping the communication landscape – whether at home, through our work, on our respective platforms, or wherever. This working paper digs into the ways that communication can contribute to the fight against climate change, why it hasn’t been super effective so far, and what we can do to fix that.

Let’s start at the beginning...

Why is communication key?

In a recent conversation I had with climate change communication scholar, Susanne Moser, I asked how communication on this issue could help mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. She responded,

“Try making anything work without saying anything and you’ll know the answer to that question.”

Point taken. Communication, the act of sharing information, is fundamental to how we define, and ultimately solve, problems. Over the last couple of hundred thousand years, we’ve used it to collaborate successfully on anything from hunting our food to closing the hole in the ozone layer. But when it comes to communicating the climate crisis in ways that bring about problem-solving action, it seems we’ve dropped the ball. On this, Susi simply stated that,

“There are ways to do it better and worse, and we’ve done it worse for a long time.”

To understand what “better” might look like, we need to know what “worse” means. So, the obvious next question is...

 

What’s been the most common approach to communicating climate change?

For about as long as there’s been communication about climate change, the focus has been on big scary details, or head-spinning technical ones. They’ve been shouted louder and louder – more information, more facts, more graphs – with the assumption that people just don’t know enough about what’s going on, and that’s why they aren’t doing anything about it. The idea, then, is to “fix” this perceived lack of knowledge by giving audiences even more information, even more facts, and even more graphs.

As Head of Sustainability & Debarbonization at The Behavioural Insights Team, Marcos Pelenur, explained to me,

“[Communicators] often think that if people just had the information and facts in front of them, they’d make an objectively rational choice. So, they try to use communication to fill this information gap.”

But that approach hasn’t been effective at getting people to take action on climate change issues. We know this thanks to a large amount of research about it1, and by virtue of the situation we’re in right now, despite all the shouting and alarm ringing that’s happened over the past couple of decades.

But why hasn’t it been effective?

Well, there are a quite few factors at play:

Firstly, there’s an increasing amount of noise out there.

We live in a time of information overload, which makes it hard to get through to anyone about anything, let alone climate change.

This means there’s high demand for a limited supply of attention, and that means that budgets matter. But the biggest budgets don’t typically belong to campaigns promoting messages about action on climate change. Rather, they tend to support the unsustainable “business as usual”.

As climate disinformation specialist, Jennie King, told me,

“For fifty or sixty years, oil and gas giants and those involved in the petrochemicals industry have invested enormous, unprecedented amounts of money in trying to shift public opinion in one direction or the other using traditional means, like advertising.”

This protracted disinformation effort is now widely reported.

But as well as Big Oil, we’ve all probably contributed to the noise at some point along the way, whether through marketing unsustainable products, fighting our way to the top of search results with a dearth of strategically curated content, unwittingly overstating our organisations’ green credentials, or whatever the case may be. In fact, our role in all this is something I’ll come back to later, because it’s important.

Throw in the emergent strategies of disinformation networks that Jennie describes are at work across the internet, being inadvertently funded by advertisers across the globe – “denying, deceiving, and delaying” action on climate change, as her incredible report on the subject puts it – and you start to gain a sense of what we’re up against in today’s overwhelming information environment. And that’s before we’re even talking about climate change and the characteristics that make it difficult to communicate to people.

But then there’s climate change itself.

It’s big, and it’s scary. It’s inconvenient and it’s complex. It’s hard to understand, it can be hard to define, and all this makes it hard to solve. On top of that, it’s often perceived as something that’s far away, happening to other people, or sometime in the future, so we don’t typically assign enough risk to it compared to other, more seemingly immediate issues3. But even if we did – and maybe this gets to the heart of why the “more information, more loudly” approach hasn’t been very effective – what would we do about it?

A lot of the effort that’s gone into informing people about climate change, or raising the understanding and concern about it, hasn’t necessarily delivered any good answers about what to do once we’ve wrapped our heads around the issue and are appropriately worried. There’s a great quote from Pidgeon & Fischhoff2:

“Even well-informed individuals can rationally do nothing if they see no viable actions to take.”

No matter how loudly we ring that bell, if we don’t show people what to do, they can’t do anything. If we don’t lower the barriers that are stopping them from taking action, how can we expect them to act?

But still, this is the approach that a lot of communicators have taken – and continue to take – and the result is that many audiences have simply stopped listening3.

As Susi Moser said, we have to do better.

Better than complex graphs, better than stale facts and figures, better than turning it all up to 11, better than just repeating the same old communications mistakes again and again and again.

Wait, what’s wrong with graphs, facts, and figures?

Facts are great. Science is great. And we shouldn’t lose sight of the indispensable importance of rigorous research and its contribution to our collective knowledge. But to bring about action, the findings of that research need to be a jumping-off point for a different kind of communication.

There’s now a well-developed research discipline dedicated to this topic, and it’s been made pretty clear that the human part of climate change communication hasn’t always been dealt with, or attended to, sufficiently well. In a 2016 paper4, Susi wrote that,

“The real challenge for climate change communication is not just raising awareness and explaining the science but motivating audiences to take action.”

Many people are fully aware of the problem, many of them are living through the impacts of it, they just might not necessarily know the best action to take in response. The rest, well, maybe they just haven’t had it put in terms that warrant them making it a priority in their lives.

So, how can we better communicate climate change?

By making it meaningful.

And understanding that meaning is subjective.

That means starting with your audience.

A lot of this first bit is going to be second nature to people, for example, from digital marketing backgrounds. We do it every day. Aligning the right messenger, with the right message, for the right recipients, through the right channel, in the right medium, using the right tone of voice, at the right time...

To know these things, we need to know our audience. And most of the time, that means talking to them.

Obviously, there’s plenty of demographic stuff like age, location, gender, etc., that can help us along the way, but people are so much more than that. They bring all kinds of pre-existing knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes with them. And they understand incoming information through those existing values.

So, what’s meaningful to each respective audience? And what’s not? Well, that’s for each of us to figure out in each given scenario.

“Meaning” might come from any number of places. Values associated with family, friends, religious communities, or other social groups, for example. Or it might be associated with local landscapes, traditions, or ingrained habits. It might even be connected to how people see themselves, or how they want to be seen.

As Head of Communications at Greenpeace Africa, Mbong Akiy Fokwa Tsafack, told me,

“Communicating climate change through people’s lived experiences is very important... If you go to a rural community in Kenya talking about climate change, you might sound out of touch. But if you’re talking about the fact that a few years ago we had two seasons, and now we only have one, then you’re bringing it down to what they have lived and what they have experienced.”

If we’re looking to generate action from individuals, families, communities, all of whom experience and understand climate change in their own way, a broad, global message probably isn’t going to cut it.6

Telling stories about climate change that give meaning to the science in the context of people’s everyday lives is a far more effective strategy than presenting them with graphs about the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is as true for audiences in your hometown as it is for those rural Kenya.

And I use “stories” intentionally here. As narrative scholar, Michael D. Jones, told me,

"The evidence and the logical arguments are far less important than how we feel about what we're hearing."

Stories are emotional. They can help us tap into people’s identities, their values, the things they care about, are often more effective than shoving graphs and warnings down their throats8. That’s because climate change means different things to different people.

By making it local, or more immediately relevant, audiences can better connect with what you’re saying. Local heroes, or heroes that the audience perceive to be like them, can be powerful too7. If we like the hero of a story, Mike explained, we’ll be much more receptive to any information embedded in it.

So, what does the path to 1.5 degrees of global warming mean to me in my daily life? Well, that depends on who I am, where I live, what I do for work and leisure, and so many other variables. In Germany, it might mean an increasing threat of devastating floods. In Switzerland, it might mean a shorter ski season. In Tuvalu, it might mean losing everything to sea-level rise.

Nobody is a blank canvas.

And everything that’s already on their canvas – all those values, beliefs, and experiences – is stuff we can tap into to help it all make sense to them. It’s an all-too common mistake to assume that the audience is clueless, or in denial, about the reality of the situation. In truth, they might be extremely informed, incredibly concerned, but may just have no idea of the most appropriate action to take. 

Which is why we also have to talk about the solutions. Susi spelled it out,

"You gotta help them... What specifically do you want people to do? Any communication [today] that doesn't do that, I think, is a failed communication."

What can the audience do? How can they do it? Why is it important to them? Who is already doing it that they can relate to and emulate? These kinds of questions can guide us in creating more effective communications.

When we blast facts at people, or scare them without providing a path to safety, or make them feel guilty without offering a road to retribution, we turn them off5. These kinds of communication strategies are a really quick route to inaction and apathy. And we can’t afford to arrive at those kinds of outcomes.

We need all hands on deck.

Some final thoughts

This working paper is a collection of insights based on recent studies, conversations with leaders in the field, and first-hand experience. I offer it not as someone who already knows all the answers, but as someone who’s on this journey too, like you are, if you’re reading this. In truth, what I’ve included here is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s an iceberg I continue to explore, and I encourage you to do the same.

The more I learn, the more I talk with other people involved in the climate movement, the more I join communities bridging the gaps between science, the arts, activism, and business – communities that inspire change, and demand change – the more optimistic I become about our ability to collaborate effectively and get through this thing. And the more I get inspired to contribute.

But to wrap things up, there’s another part to all this that comes up time and time again in these communities that I’m now a part of, and the conversations that I’m increasingly having... It’s the bit I warned you we’d come back to.

Beyond the “what” you’re communicating, and the “how” you’re communicating it. There’s also the “who” you’re communicating it for.

You’re a community of individuals with a lot of talent, and that makes you powerful. Where you choose to commit your skills and abilities matters. I’ve been brought to reflect on this a lot recently, and I think there are some valuable questions to ask of ourselves related to this power we hold:

Do we want to work on this or that brief? Do we want to give our talent to industries and clients that perpetuate the climate crisis and uphold the unsustainable status quo? Are we guilty of greenwashing? These kinds of questions. And they are important to ask, because as Jennie King explained to me,

“Employees can encourage senior leadership to think about the fact that this is not the direction of travel anymore – we are going to lose the good opinion of the public, we are going to lose credibility, you’re going to lose your talent pool because future [talent] is not going to want to work for companies that represent those kinds of clients.”

A recent KPMG study showed how right Jennie was about that. They call it “climate quitting”.

Sometimes, it seems, the most impactful thing we can do is vote with our talent. And in a world where many of us are looking around for the actions that we can take in our lives that might actually make a difference, this could be a good place to start.

To put that in communicative terms, “I’m out” is a pretty strong message to send.

About Dickon

Dickon took an undergraduate degree in digital media before embarking on a career in marketing and communications. A decade later, he retrained to be of service to the climate movement, first taking an MSc in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social, Environmental, and Economic Sustainability at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and then an MPhil in Development, Environment, and Cultural Change at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment. He currently works in communications within the circular economy, mentors startups in the ocean and climate space, and hosts a podcast, Communicating Climate Change, which seeks to help listeners (and himself) do exactly that.

References

1 Moser & Dilling, 2007: Creating a climate for change: Communicating climate change and facilitating social change.

2 Pidgeon & Fischoff, 2011: The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks.

3 Moser & Dilling, 2007.

4 Moser, 2016: Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: what more is there to say?

5 Moser & Dilling, 2007.

6 Harriss, 2007: An ongoing dialogue on climate change

7 Jones, 2014: How heroes shape our perception of climate science.

8 Moser & Dilling, 2007.