With elections fast approaching, climate communicators need to answer some key questions: How can we connect people’s increasingly complex near-term priorities with long-term climate goals? How can we discuss climate without saying “climate”? State advocates and policymakers need to reframe the climate narrative to highlight bipartisan solutions to the issues communities prioritize today. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to communicating on climate, we can take a critical look at what does and doesn’t work in terms of narrative strategy, impactful storytelling, and message delivery.
We convened experts in the field of climate and environmental justice communications to share their research and recommendations on reframing the climate narrative. Will Howard, Head of Insights and Advisory Services at Potential Energy Coalition, shared data and guidance from their recent report, Fixing Climate Communications; and Crystal Bernard, State Initiatives Strategist at Just Solutions, explored insights and strategies from their recently released nonpartisan field guide, The Call to Climate Justice.
Talking about Climate Change: What the Data Says
Learn more by watching the webinar at 05:35.
Will Howard provided insights on how to craft messaging that shifts public opinion, exploring data and recommendations from Potential Energy Coalition’s Fixing Climate Communications report. Highlights from his presentation include:
- While over two thirds of the U.S. still support government action on climate change, support for key policies related to clean energy deployment and sector-specific decarbonization hover around 50%.
- The strongest anti-climate messaging can reduce this support by up to 30 percentage points, while the strongest pro-climate messaging can increase support by around 20 points.
- How you frame your message can lose support on key policies, including wording that is:
- Too complex → Avoid using jargon and acronyms. Relying on words that people don’t understand creates an opportunity for opponents to reframe those words in a negative context.
- Too conceptual → Reconsider pointing only to high-level benefits. Promising green jobs, growth, and innovation are not particularly effective at increasing support for specific climate issues.
- Too disruptive → Reframe bans, limits, and phaseout language. Leading with restrictive terms plays into opponents’ arguments that climate advocates are taking things away from the public.
- Too global → Refocus the issue from global to local. Concentrating on the planetary outcomes of climate change diffuses responsibility and impact, while people are more concerned and motivated by problems and solutions closer to home.
- Too ideological → Stay aware of how polarizing your language is. Words like “crisis” and “green” can signal to some of your audience that you have an agenda that carries a weight you don’t intend.
- Direct messages related to tangible climate consequences like pollution, and human stories like losing your family’s favorite outdoor space, outperform indirect messages related to jobs and innovation.
- The best message explains that the consequences of climate change are fundamentally unfair, and then:
- Makes the consequences material. Across the political spectrum, three climate consequences consistently perform well:
- Money: Climate is costing you money unfairly.
- Health: Fossil fuel pollution is affecting your health.
- Love: Worsening extreme weather events are threatening the people and places you love.
- Makes the culprit real. Identifying a tangible culprit — pollution and polluters, rather than climate change — depolarizes messaging and increases perceptions of how solvable the climate crisis is.
- Makes the cure exciting. Positioning clean energy as a source of unlimited, affordable power motivates individuals by spotlighting their own power and agency.
Reframing Narrative Strategy and Nonpartisan Engagement
Learn more by watching the webinar at 30:11.
Crystal Bernard shared her expertise on reframing the climate narrative and crafting meaningful nonpartisan messages around elections, providing insights from The Call to Climate Justice, Just Solutions’ non-partisan field guide for candidates and voters. Highlights from her presentation include:
- Fragmented conversations about everyday priorities like energy bills, housing, healthcare, new technologies, and insurance fail to connect climate policy choices to lived experience.
- Strong narrative strategy reframes the dominant message, shifting the blame and responsibility for the climate crisis from the individual to corporations, utilities, and policymakers.
- This changes the core logic of the argument, centered on how systems, rather than personal behavior alone, play a role in climate and energy outcomes, and strengthen the underlying ideology of accountability and collective solutions.
- Effective narrative strategy intentionally considers the:
- Objective: What should people see differently?
- Audience: Who are you trying to reach, and what do they already care about?
- Method: How can you frame the problem and solution in a way that connects to those values?
- Messenger: Who can credibly and authentically deliver the message?
- 501(c)(3) organizations can provide nonpartisan education for candidates and voters, ensuring that they educate all candidates equally, do not tell people who to vote for, and keep candidate questions open-ended and free of organizational agendas.
- Ensure candidate questions are connected to your narrative by starting with a shared experience or context, asking an open-ended question that reveals how candidates would take action on specific issues, and customizing with local stories or data.
- Case Study: Michigan Solutions for All, a messaging campaign surrounding Inflation Reduction Act/Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act investments, that was driven by partnerships across 15+ community organizations in urban centers across Michigan. This work, which reached 714k people and spurred over 9k individual actions, bore three major lessons learned:
- Lead with tangible outcomes, like affordability, health, job stability, and other “kitchen-table” topics.
- Localize the entry point by spotlighting hyperlocal issues and experiences.
- Center trusted messengers, placing frontline leaders and local partners as the messenger, not just institutions. The people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.
Q&A
Learn more by watching the Q&A at 46:45.
Q: How can you move people to action once they’ve been convinced by your message?
Q: Deploying new large energy infrastructure projects, including clean energy, often garners a lot of opposition. What advice would you give on messaging around this issue?
Q: Can you explain more about how speaking about jobs and economic benefits fails to build support at a high level, while local messaging about specific local jobs succeeds in building support?
