A Broader Audience and Greater Impact: Five Simple Shifts for Climate Communication in 2026.
How do we build broad support for climate solutions?
From years of polling, message testing, and real-world campaigns on climate change and clean energy, including a recent 6-country study in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, we’ve observed the same thing again and again: narrative is the biggest obstacle in building support for climate solutions
Five Simple Shifts for Climate Communication in 2026 synthesizes our most consistent insights from five years of ongoing message testing and public opinion polling and provides specific guidance on how to talk about climate change in a way that broadens the tent and minimizes the possibility of polarization.
The basic shifts in framing and vocabulary outlined in this guide can be valuable to anyone who’s hoping to communicate effectively about climate change with the broadest possible audiences.
What messages are most effective for broadening support for climate solutions?
Across our work, we’ve identified five specific ways climate communicators can evolve the narrative. This new approach addresses the most pronounced barriers that blocked progress in the past by making the problem feel more relevant and solutions feel more reasonable and rewarding.
The five shifts, which are expanded on in this 2026 climate change communication guide, include:
- From morality → to materiality.
Connect climate change to real-world costs people already feel—weather damage, insurance, health, and energy bills. Climate change can’t just feel like a cause. It has to feel like a cost. - From luxury→ to affordability.
Position clean energy as the cheaper, practical choice, not a premium product. - From banning→ to building.
Shift away from “bans” and “mandates” toward growth, standards, incentives, and choice. - From global→ to national & local.
Tap into pride, protection, and local ownership instead of distant, abstract responsibility. - From massive→ to manageable.
Replace overwhelming goals with achievable, step-by-step progress people believe can work.
What is in this 2026 climate change communications guide?
This guide translates years of research into a clear, actionable guidance for improving climate and clean energy communication, including:
- Five high-impact narrative shifts proven to increase support for climate and clean energy solutions.
- Words and phrases to use—and avoid to reduce polarization and expand your audience.
- Plain-language alternatives to technical or politically coded climate jargon.
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