Step 1. Establish the scientific basis of greenhouse gases and global warming.
At this stage you will lose the few people who are die-hard climate skeptics, but if someone is unwilling to grasp these very simple concepts there is no amount of effort that can ever convince them. If someone responds with questions about solar cycles or, “but isn’t CO2 is actually good?” you can providing debunking information, but after one or two times additional engagement will not be worth your time.
The Scientific Basis summary in the IPCC Sixth assessment is the most complete place to find information. For a very simple overview, check out the EPA’s explainer page.
Step 2. Explain how we can solve climate change by drawing down greenhouse gas emissions using existing technology, and how a modernized grid will bring an end to air pollution, make energy more reliable, affordable, and democratic, and improve the quality of life for everyone.
This can be done following any number of well-researched socio-technical pathways (e.g. this, this, this, and this) and through various technology combinations: energy efficiency wherever it makes sense; wind and solar as the electric power workhorse; hydro, geothermal, and some nuclear power as steady clean-firm; green hydrogen for fertilizers, synthetic methanol, and emergency backup power; energy storage of all durations with batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage; and at the margins some carbon capture along the way.
As much as possible, these infrastructures should be designed in collaboration or close consultation with communities where they are located and provide social co-benefits that can help to advance the perception of carbon-free energy in the mind of the public.
This second step is the hardest part, and it is largely now the focus of the fossil fuel lobby’s online disinformation campaigns that dismiss solutions as naive despite the fact that many of them are being deployed successfully today. It might be important to get ahead of some of the bad information about wind and solar farms. For example, wind turbines are not a threat to bird populations (climate is), they don’t cause health problems from infrasound, and offshore wind doesn’t hurt whales. Solar panels do not pollute groundwater. Both solar and wind can coexist wonderfully with agricultural landscapes.
In order to get this step right we have to be inclusive. No infighting! All technically viable solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and capture carbon are on the table. That includes every kind of renewable energy at every scale. It includes energy storage technologies of every kind and every opportunity to replace gas combustion with electrical appliances. It also includes nuclear power and some carbon capture.
Each of these technologies must be considered in the context of their other environmental impacts to water, soil, living biomass, habitat. They must be considered in the context of their social impacts as well and priority should be placed on implementing the least environmentally harmful projects that have the greatest social upsides.
We must recognize that systems of infrastructure are interconnected with natural systems and social systems. By co-designing solutions with people, we can transfer knowledge, not just hardware. The energy transition is something we build together, it is not something that is done to us.
Provide examples of how we are already making progress and how the solutions are more economically efficient than maintaining the status quo. Sell this part by planting a seed of desire. Talk about energy abundance. If you get this part right you may even pick back up some of the deniers when they conclude the energy transition (and the agricultural transition) is a good idea, warming or no warming.
Step 3. Avoid talking too much about sacrifice, degrowth, economic contraction, and the great simplification when the carbon bubble pops, or any variation on these themes. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Don’t add economic doom on top of climate doom. While the temptation to do is great and the clicks will surely follow from that kind of doom-scroll bait, all this will do over time is create more division where we need to instead build more solidarity.
By focusing on an end-of-days narrative, you also provide fuel to the deniers who will go out of their way to point out you and your arguments as “chicken littles” when the sky fails to fall in the time span you suggest that it might. Do not turn climate action into a doomsday religion.
Step 4. Do not vilify anyone.
We live in a system where millions of people are dependent upon our existing ways of making and consuming energy. Build bridges by meeting folks where they are at. For those who work in the fossil fuel industry, talk about the opportunities for hydraulic fracturing drilling technology to transfer to enhanced geothermal. Point to Fervo Energy, whose founder came from oil and gas as one example among many.
Yes it’s true that private planes are terrible and that the footprint of the 1% is a large part of the problem. It is understandable to come to the conclusion that the message should therefore be “eat the rich,” but the rich are also a powerful part of the coalition we need to build. It’s fine to talk about progressive economic policy in the context of climate action. There is a lot of intersectionality to be leveraged there. The communications strategy toward the 1% should not be that we are going to eat them, but rather that their world will also be improved by a 100% renewable energy powered equitable circular economy with healthy air, healthy food, and a healthy population of well-off consumers who will continue to buy the products and services that their companies sell.
Step 5. Be kind to those with whom you disagree.
It is sometimes easy to make a target out of what you perceive to be stupidity and those memes can get some traction. But all you are really doing is shooting the climate movement in the foot as you deepen social rifts, encourage tribalism, and set polarization of climate action into stone. This is exactly what the fossil fuel executives would like to see happen. When climate action can be framed as a pet issue for the “left” then we have lost roughly half of our potential coalition.
Step 6. Be the change you wish to see.
There is a place for peaceful protest and civil disobedience. When you cross the line to property destruction or violence you stop acting as a force of change for good and you begin to operate as a force for chaos. Your brave and noble actions will be applauded by an already enlightened, frightened, and outraged base, but you will win over very few who were not already on board.
Instead, enjoy time performatively with your friends and fellow activists in the shade of solar PV canopies or organize your neighborhood to build a community solar park if you don’t already have one. Demonstrate how great your new induction range is. Talk about how much better the vegetables are that you get at the local farmer’s market. Highlight the benefits of a car free lifestyle or of living with a car that has no exhaust or internal combustion engine to leak oil or break down. Enjoy affordable heat in the dead of winter from your whole home heat pump. Do all of these things together with hundreds of people at once so that the audience you attract is inspired and filled with emotion by what is possible.
Change will come because the public sees these replacements as undeniable improvements over the old versions. Madison Avenue creative agencies never scared people into buying internal combustion engine cars or shamed them into buying disposable plastic stuff. They tempted them. Likewise, climate action must be at least as tempting, and preferable more so.
The tide is already shifting!
There are a number of influential climate activists who are taking this turn toward hope and building a narrative around better post-carbon futures.
But there is clearly a lot of work left to do and many imaginations left to inspire with reality-based stories of the benefits of life in a world that no longer burns fossil fuel for energy.
For a very thorough analysis of the social science on politically effective climate communications check out this excellent paper by Dr. Genevieve Guenther: “Communicating the climate emergency: imagination, emotion, action.”
I differ slightly with her bottom line conclusion in that Dr. Guenther places equal value on Fear, Outrage, and Desire, whereas I think it is time to start downplaying Fear and Outrage and focus almost exclusively on Desire, especially now that the technology that will end fossil fuel combustion while also improving our lives is very much ready for prime time.
As she say, it is important to avoid too much “reassurance that technical solutions to the climate crisis exist” without also making sure people understand the enormity of the systems change that the massive deployment of that technology will entail, and that such massive change requires getting out the vote and empowering new leadership that understands clearly what must be done and the investments that are required.
I completely endorse her powerful concluding sentence:
There is no greater task for climate-change communicators now than telling the stories that will bring that world into being.”