A New Climate Communication Playbook: 5 Strategies to Transform Our Environmental Discourse

Our environmental politics has failed. It’s time to chart a new course.

Why we’ve failed is complex. Yet, I think many of these reasons funnel into the failure of our language.

Let’s Examine Our Language and Offer Fresh Alternatives

The chosen language of the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who buy them has seeped into popular discourse. Even the climate-conscious repeat their talking points, unaware of where they come from.

The bottom line is that the way we talk about saving the planet needs to change – and we can start right now.

Out: “Climate Change” In: “Environmental Destruction”

The phrase “climate change” became popular after political strategist Frank Luntz advised the Bush administration to use it to downplay the risks of burning our planet. Why did they adopt it?

“Change” doesn’t sound so scary.

It’s time to abandon this term in favor of ones that convey, at the least, that what we’re facing is not good. Destruction and catastrophe, in my view, are simple enough.

“Climate destruction,” “environmental destruction,” or “destroying the planet” are all stronger alternatives to “climate change” and “global warming.”

Out: “Costs” In: “Preparing and Investing”

In his book Climate Radicals: Why Our Environmental Politics Isn’t Working, Cameron Abadi reveals that even in Germany, where there’s a consensus on the need to take planet-saving action, they struggle to implement policies.

Politicians undermine initiatives by framing environmental actions as financially prohibitive, blocking progress. “It will raise your electric bill.” “You’ll be forced to buy an expensive EV.”

The idea that saving our planet will cost too much is ridiculous.

First, often, it’s flat-out not true. For example, scientist Andrew Dessler explained how renewables lower energy bills.

Second, if we go extinct, everything is worthless. The idea of money ceases to exist.

Third, it ignores the costs of not acting. The California wildfires cost an estimated $250 billion. For context, New York’s Second Avenue Subway phase one cost $4.4 billion.

One study estimates the cost of environmental destruction will be $38 trillion by 2049. In 2024, the U.S. budget was $6.8 trillion.

Opponents frame environmental action as “costs” at best, and in these times, “woke fraudulent waste.”

In her book, The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight it Dr. Genevieve Guenther provides alternative language. She writes that the upfront expenses of action, “like those of any moneymaking endeavor, are real. Yet we should call these outlays not ‘costs,’ but investments.”

We should talk about it like saving up for retirement or a big purchase.

Saving up for retirement is considered a virtue in our society. It’s not “waste.” We should frame the cost of inaction as reckless and stupid as never saving money and instead going into credit card debt.

Let’s frame protecting the environment as responsible, like saving for our future.

Out: “Resilience” In: “Transformation”

In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson explains how the term “resilience” has encouraged a situation where we patch up our problems without addressing the root causes. He writes that the language doesn’t “transform the conditions that give rise” to the problems of cities.

The language “transformation” encourages us to daydream and imagine a different path.

I volunteer with an activist group called South Bronx Unite. They say they want to “transform” the South Bronx waterfront. Because that’s what it requires. Right now, it’s reserved for businesses like Waste Management and trucking facilities.

“Resilience” provides little excitement. They want to transform it into public green space with flood protection that serves the community rather than industry.

This plan would provide the South Bronx with park space they’ve never had. Global climate destruction or not, they want transformation, not merely resilience.

“Transformation” appeals to our excitement and optimism. It reframes climate action as a way to right our wrongs. Let’s talk about the potential positives, not just avoiding negatives.

In: “Stewardship,” “Responsibility,” and “Providing”

Our current climate communication is failing, especially with men. According to some research, women in wealthy countries are more likely to support climate action.

With these terms, I think of men I know who take pride in “providing” for their family, putting food on the table and caring for them.

“Stewardship” is a word we use today in New York’s community gardens. Neighbors see those who tend the gardens as the stewards of the land that’s here for everyone.

One long-time community gardener says the garden is about “providing” for “feeding” the community.

These are all terms that conservative American politicians from Teddy Roosevelt to Nixon to Reagan used. The idea that we should be responsible for the land we live on used to not be controversial. It used to be common sense.

In: Talk About What We Already See

This year marks the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s death. In 2022 I wrote how the biggest lesson I learned from Orwell is that we can understand politics by trusting our own eyes and ears.

At the end of Orwell’s nonfiction work, Homage to Catalonia, on his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War he wrote, “It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes.”

Talking about the climate often strays away from what we see and into partisan talking points. The topic of saving the planet is broad. However, each of the components we can observe and understand.

For example, we can see that coffee must be grown on higher slopes. We can see where urban marshlands now flood due to overdevelopment.

New York City’s waterways fill with poop from dumping untreated sewage on rainy days. We measure and know this. We know that more green space would absorb more rain, diverting it from the sewer and cleaning the waterways.

Talk about what we see.

Well before mass human death, we’ll see increasing banana and coffee prices. Before cities become inhabitable, we’ll see mass migration away from those places. The key is to link what we see with the solutions we already have.

What Are Your Ideas?

What phrases should we adopt or cut out? Leave a comment on this blog post. Together, we can fight back against planet-destroying propaganda and create a new language that inspires real action.

Un abrazo,

~David

P.S. Recommended Reading + Resources

DISCLOSURE: These are affiliate links to bookshop.org, an online bookstore. I receive a 10% commission if you buy from here. But check your library first!

If you want to dive deeper, I recommend two books. The first is The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It. It goes through six of the most common talking points against climate action, including a few I mentioned here.

The second is Frank Luntz’s Words That Work. It’s not about the environment, but it provides a high-level overview of modern political talking points.

I’ve also written about this topic for years. Here are some articles to go further.

How Word Choice Influences Policy and The Ladder of Abstraction

9 Tips to Help You Talk About Climate Change from Saving Us

Defensive Propaganda: How George Orwell Deconstructs Word Choice in Homage to Catalonia

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