6 Frameworks for Communicating Climate Courageously
Spread the word while not only avoiding burnout, but also keeping your happy warrior spirit burning— onward!
6 Models for Courageous Climate Communication
This blog overviews several climate communications models and frameworks compiled from a series of climate science + solutions certifications, volunteer presentation talks, discussions, and trainings.
These are core to the communications tools that keep my happy warrior spirit empowered. Shared with climate activist circles and clean energy communicators. With gratitude to all my teachers, trainings, and certification sources:
Climate Scientists & Communicator Extraordinaire (Author of “A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World”) Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
EcoAmerica Let’s Talk Climate & the Climate Health Ambassador Network
Climate Central, Climate Reporting Masterclass and Climate Matters Program
Here are 6 questions to orient us towards communicating climate courageously; and the 6 Models to empower us with ways to answer.
Who are we talking to? 🌎 Global Warming’s 5 Americas
What’s the value? 🫶 Value-Based Messaging
How do we focus on action? 📰 Solutions Journalism
How do we solve everything? 📊 Multi-solving / Multi-Benefit Value Stacking
How do we keep going? 🕯️ Active Hope
How do we hold it all together? 🌅 Many Bold Horizons
1. Global Warming’s 5 Americas
Who are we talking to? Right now, I’m talking to some concerned, alarmed, and highly motivated climate folks. But when you consider each of these models, I will urge you, as with every bit of collateral we ship, go back to think about your audience to understand how much climate to frontload in the message, versus how much of a different value to include.
This is the same as the first commandment of Marketing: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Not just to know--- but to PERSONALIZE your communications
Climate is a values issue
Climate impacts everything we value
But we happen to hold different values
How do we find common cause? You personalize
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE’S AUDIENCES. Know who will be the best messenger, or attributable source to reference, based on audience signals:
2. Value-Based Messaging
What’s the value? Value-based messaging (VBM) is a strategic way of communicating your value proposition to your prospective audience. It focuses on how you can help your audience solve their problems or fulfill their dreams. The idea behind VBM in marketing is simple: you identify values that are important to your customers and then target them with messages prioritizing those values.
Value-Based Messaging requires listening for the signals that show an audience’s values-- so they can easily be deployed reactively in conversation. But also, in standalone communication. To focus on common American values specific to the audience, as EcoAmerica Let’s Talk Climate -- American Messaging Guide recommends, you can break these down into value categories:
Paint the Future: opportunity, community, fairness, prosperity
Next big thing: hard work, innovation, opportunity, patriotism
For the children: family, children, responsibility, protection, caring
Inevitability: fairness, freedom, independence, opportunity
More on value-based messaging from Katharine Hayhoe:
Instead, I’ve learned that climate change is, at its heart, a values issue; and many of us are under the impression that caring about climate change requires special “green” values. For many people in the U.S., “green” values tend to come with a lot of baggage attached, baggage that may be directly opposed to who we are and what we believe.
In my communication, now, I begin with the values that I share with whomever I am talking to. These values may focus on something as simple as wondering where our water will be coming from in 20 years; worrying about the local economy; caring for our children; or our desire to live out the faith that is central to who we are. I emphasize how important these values are, and what they mean to me personally. Then, and only then, do I connect those values to the issue of climate change. We care about climate change because it is making our water more scarce here in west Texas where we live; because it impacts our local economy; because it affects our kids’ health and their future security; and because our faith commands us to love and care for others, especially those who lack the resources we do.
We all have the values we need to care about climate change; we just need to make the connection.
On climate change and other issues with moral implications, we tend to believe that everyone should care for the same self-evident reasons we do. If they don’t, we all too often assume they lack morals. But most people do have morals and are acting according to them; they’re just different from ours. And if we are aware of these differences, we can speak to them.
― Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World
More from Dr. Katharine Hayhoe— Talking About Climate: Build Consensus Through Shared Values and Common Ground
More on Value-Based Messaging from a recent research paper in the Frontiers Journal: A values-based approach to knowledge in the public's representations of climate change on social media
3. Solutions Journalism
How do we focus on action? Across the world, more than 30% of folks admit to actively avoiding news. Now what can we guess happens to this figure if we get more granular by the type of news, say… Environmental news ? Climate news? Health news? Energy news?
So, what causes people to avoid the news? People don’t have the time for this as well as people don’t have any more effs to give, AKA:
Numbing fatigue
Compassion fatigue
According to studies, solutions-oriented reporting made people feel less anxious and more energized and increased their connection to the community. But beyond just feeling “less upset” when they step away from the news, audiences reported a stronger willingness to talk about the issues, collaborate with others, and hold officials in positions of power accountable for change.
Put simply as a headline: Solution-Focused News Increases Optimism, Empowerment and Connectedness to Community.
Now here are a few more resources on this model for climate comms:
RESEARCH: Advocacy messages about climate and health are more effective when they include information about risks, solutions, and a normative appeal: Evidence from a conjoint experiment
PLAYBOOK: Social Media for Solution Journalism
4. Multi-solving / Multi-Benefit Value Stacking
How do we solve everything? Changing the false concept that taking climate action is sacrifice by focusing on all the social benefits of our energy transition. One way to think about and frame all benefits, directly at the heart of Green New Deal policy concepts is: Multisolving
What is Multisolving? Using one investment of time or effort to solve several problems at once in a way that also improves equity
Example Cast Study: Pollinator-Friendly Community Solar (President Jimmy Carter transforming his ol’ peanut farm into a solar farm). Good for supporting pollinators, replenishing healthier power grids, and empowering people! Win-win-win
What is Multi-Benefit Value-Stacking? For communication pros, think ranked value-message stacking. ‘Multisolving’ with a fancier name, specific to the solar and storage industries. The jargony language used in these models should make it obvious why the solar industry needs better storytellers
A Wonky Industry Paper: Maximizing Value from Distributed Energy Through Value Stacking
More Consumer-Friendly Case Study: Community Solar, spotlighted by the nonprofit Fresh Energy
5. Active Hope
How do we keep going? The Spiral of Active Hope is a conversational framework from writer Joanna Macy inspired by buddhist practices— used to move past despair in the face of systemic challenges and into active hope. There is more content on this available within her book “Active Hope” or online.
6. Many Bold Horizons
How do we hold it all together? I’ve learned this question is for us to answer, us to create our own models. So I’ve given a stab by compiling concepts from the models throughout this deck.
Viewed like this, it’s a sunrise on a horizon over a solar farm. The rays of light make up the detailed attributes, reminders of
Audience
Values
Identity
Solutions
Multi-Benefit
Vision
Action
Interconnection
Compassion
Along the sides of the solar garden are reminders of the detail in the summary and how inseparate they really are. But turn it upside down and see…
Underlying all of this is joy.
I’ll end this blog by highlighting a huge new research paper from the Center for Climate Communication published: Harnessing the Power of Communication and Behavior Science to Enhance Society's Response to Climate Change, in the Journal of Annual Reviews, by Edward W. Maibach, Sri Saahitya Uppalapati, Margaret Orr, and Jagadish Thaker
Topline Conclusion: To harness the power of communication and behavior science, make communication clear and easy to understand, and make actions fun and feel-good.
THEE RESEARCH: Harnessing the Power of Communication and Behavior Science to Enhance Society's Response to Climate Change, in the Journal of Annual Reviews, by Edward W. Maibach Sri Saahitya Uppalapati,1 Margaret Orr and Jagadish Thaker
Albert Bandura (1986) has identified three qualitatively distinct motivations for taking actions: physical benefits (e.g., physical pleasure, reduced risk of bodily harm), social benefits (e.g., enhanced social standing, rewarding social interactions), and self-evaluative benefits (e.g., thinking highly of oneself as a result of having done the right thing). Bandura makes the case that self-evaluative benefits are the most motivating, and physical benefits the least motivating.
The empirical research on motivators of pro-environmental behaviors is largely consistent with Bandura's theory: Intrinsic rewards and social rewards have been consistently shown to be powerful in shaping people's pro-environmental behavior (Crompton 2011). Intrinsic rewards lead people to feel good about themselves when they take actions they deem to be right actions, whereas social rewards accrue when people feel valued or approved of by others as a result of their action (Crompton 2011). Receiving positive or encouraging feedback, feeling part of a community, and feeling that one is behaving according to one's own values are all powerful motivators of pro-environmental action (Crompton 2011, Handgraaf et al. 2013, Grilli & Curtis 2021, Vine & Jones 2016).
Communication efforts should make use of simple, clear messages that are repeated often by a variety of trusted and caring sources; behavior change campaigns should strive to make the recommended behavior easy, fun, and popular. With these two guiding heuristics as tools, readers are well-equipped to help bring about the changes that are necessary to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change.