Climate change is making extreme weather more common – but many people still don’t make the connection between planet-warming pollution and the increase in deadly storms, droughts, fires, and floods. Potential Energy set out to turn extreme weather events into teachable moments to help more people connect the dots and drive support for climate solutions.
Our work
Shifting the Narrative.
Most Americans (73%) say that the world is experiencing more extreme weather patterns and news headlines have begun describing the situation as “the new normal.” Despite clear science showing the link between carbon pollution and extreme weather, half of Americans (50%) say that they think the increase is driven by natural changes.
Insights:
For the past several years, Potential Energy has been running campaigns across the country during moments of extreme weather, and we’ve conducted deep analytics on how to communicate in a way that motivates people. We uncovered two key insights.
- We need to shift the frame from natural disasters to unnatural disasters in order to make the link that pollution is causing extreme weather. This shift reframes extreme weather through climate change messaging that clearly links pollution to lived experience.
- These messages are twice as effective when people encounter them during extreme weather events.
Program:
Based upon what we learned from the data, Potential Energy created a four-pronged campaign to shift the narrative on extreme weather in the United States.
Uniting the movement.
We knew this message would be more effective if more people used it, so we spread the word far and wide in the climate movement, we created a messaging playbook that everyone could use, and we launched a digital hub with advertising content for over 100 other groups to share.
Weather communicators.
Media voices – and weathercasters in particular – are often the first ones to communicate with Americans about extreme weather events. We shared our findings to help them learn how to more effectively draw the connection between climate change and the events they were covering. Strengthening disaster communication in these moments helps climate communication feel timely, relevant, and credible.
Building the network.
Meteorologists aren’t the only ones talking about extreme weather. We also engaged with a large network of online influencers, celebrities, and local community voices – including spokespeople like the Science Moms – to share messaging guidance and find moments to reinforce the narrative for our audiences.
Donation platform.
Communities affected by extreme weather events need immediate aid. In the aftermath of the devastating hurricanes that struck the southeastern United States in 2024, we teamed up with Science Moms, All Hands and Hearts and Extreme Weather Survivors to launch a donation platform that educated visitors on the causes of extreme weather while also providing a way to support the victims.
Results:
Our work to build and unite the climate movement and weather communicators around a single, highly-effective message was incredibly successful. The Potential Energy team briefed hundreds of organizations, including many of the world’s largest climate and environmental groups, on the most effective messages and strategies to communicate about extreme weather. Our Unnatural Disasters Resource Hub demonstrated its effectiveness as a tool for rapidly disseminating proven creative content across channels. This approach helped scale climate change communication by giving partners a shared framework for responding to unnatural disasters.
In the summer of 2024, we also developed and launched a new, triggered media buying technology that enabled us to respond when temperatures or storm activity fell outside normal ranges. Randomized controlled trials confirmed the efficacy of communicating with people when extreme weather is on their screens and in their social media feeds – and going forward, we will be able to rapidly react and deploy tested, proven messaging when unnatural disasters strike.
Creative.
Unnatural disasters are taking the places we love. Carbon pollution causing droughts? And also floods? For most people the connection between these things just isn’t very intuitive. To bridge this gap, we focused on protecting the places that matter most.
related work
Science moms: depolarizing climate change
Climate change has become a highly polarized issue in the United States. That’s a big problem if we’re…
It takes labor: lowering pollution from industry in Pennsylvania
Large-scale industrial pollution is a major driver of climate change, but we can’t fix it without the support…
Powered by Michigan: advancing state ambition on clean energy
When national-level progress bogs down, individual states can still move ahead with bold climate solutions.
We can solve this together.
Potential Energy collaborates with partners across the climate sector and marketing industry to reach the most people with the most effective climate narratives.
