Issue 34
Fixing Climate Communications,
a New Global Report
Announcing a new global report on how climate communicators can move beyond narrow narratives and power durable progress.
Climate communication is at a crossroads.
Critical voices are going quiet. Both private sector companies and public sector leaders are shying away from talking about climate change, and total media coverage has declined significantly since its peak in 2021.
The world is turning inward. As economic insecurity mounts, geopolitical tension rises, and the infosphere fragments, people’s circles of attention are shrinking, keeping focused on their own finances, families, communities, and trusted sources.
Today’s most common climate messages aren’t connecting. “Achieving net zero” ranks near the absolute bottom on people’s list of concerns. Anytime the word “ban” or “mandate” is mentioned, public support drops as much as 20%. “Green jobs” sound more like a promise than a reality, a “massive energy transition” sounds difficult and expensive, and the scolding “shoulds” and “sacrifices” of traditional environmental communication increasingly turn people off to the cause.
What’s the path forward? Potential Energy, commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation in association with its public charity, conducted extensive global research on climate change awareness and public sentiment with over 83,000 respondents across six countries–the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, and France–to identify narratives that can expand support for climate action and help us regain momentum.
What Does Climate Change Public Opinion Research Tell Us?
The data is clear: climate still matters. Climate change is not a narrow issue, but today’s narratives are narrowing the audience. We can recapture momentum and broaden support if we shift the way we’re telling our stories.
Three essential shifts in frame
Instead of the complexities and abstractions of past climate communication, the most effective messages:
- Focus heavily on the human and material consequences of climate. Across all six countries, three messages about the everyday impacts of pollution and an overheating planet are consistently the most effective at driving support. Critically, they all go through the “front door.” They are about pollution and an overheating planet, not “side door” benefits like economic growth.
Love: A message about how extreme weather is already harming the people and places we care about.
Health: A message about how oil & gas chemicals are everywhere, unnatural, and unhealthy.
Money: A message about how the financial cost of climate change is unfairly affecting us.
- Make the cause concrete: “pollution” reminds people climate change is a problem we can solve. Returning to the root cause in plain language emphasizes this is a real, physical problem with a practical solution: reducing the pollution that’s warming the planet. This framing makes climate change feel 10-20% more solvable.
- Make the cure exciting: unlimited, reliable sources of local power. Instead of focusing solely on the things we’re banning and blocking, spend time on what we’re building toward: MORE energy. By a ratio of more than 2 to 1, people across the globe think building ‘all or mostly clean’ is a better way to meet growing demand for energy than ‘all or mostly fossil.’ Connect clean energy to the security, affordability, and freedom it provides households and countries.
How Can Climate Change Action Be Expanded?
The full report, available here, offers much more detail on the state of today’s climate communication and the narratives that can power durable progress.
With the right message, climate change progress is possible. But in a changing world, the narratives we’ve relied on in the past are narrowing the audience. Our data shows the solution is simple: get back to basics. Keep the focus on the personal consequences, the chemical cause, and the promising cure. If we tell stories of love, health, money, and power, we can regain momentum and make climate action a top citizen priority, a top policy priority, and a message that spreads.
Yours in partnership,
John
Article by John Marshall
John Marshall is the founder and CEO of Potential Energy. John advises global leaders on strategies to effectively communicate about climate solutions, and is a frequent industry commentator and speaker. John’s innovative approach to building public support for climate action is informed by his 30+ years of experience advising the leaders of Fortune 500 companies on branding and marketing.
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