We Need to Pivot to Our Own. I am giving testimony to an administrative law judge on the impact of climate change on Minnesota crops, and why we shouldn’t allow a dirty tar sands pipeline to be built in our state. There are three hundred people in the room. [...]
I am heading west. The land is brushed with a thousand shades of khaki and rust. As I rise up out of the Missouri breaks, the sun slides under a reef of clouds and lights the horizon for a thousand miles. Hawks stand witness as they sit on fence [...]
Black Lives Matter! I can't breathe. George Floyd. No justice/no peace. Defund the police. Protestors. Looters. Riots. Law and order. Activism is not terrorism. Movements and causes rise and fall based on the language they use. Not only the current events, but the climate and environmental movements as well. [...]
"Do you want to eat your peas with a fork or a knife?" is a well known false choice that parents use with kids. In either choice, hopefully, they will eat their peas. False choices are a particular type of frame. They are used a lot with both climate [...]
The death toll does matter, but I want to tell you a story. When I was a kid, my father stopped to get gas at a country station. I saw an old man sitting in the shade outside. He was dressed in a torn hunting vest and ragged clothes. [...]
I am captivated by maps. They possess some magical pull on my imagination. Names take on a mystical significance with the rhythm of their syllables; the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Kyoto and the Cauca. This could just be a romantic reflection, but I am curious about our human attraction to horizons. [...]
As climate communicators, we are all struggling with three main questions during the pandemic. The first is when is an appropriate time to restart our messaging. The second is what messages work best during these times. The third is which audience targets yield the biggest benefits. A number of [...]
I’d just finished giving testimony to an administrative law judge on why a new dirty tar sands pipeline was a bad idea. It is the climate equivalent of putting 40 black smoking coal plants in my state. There was a group of Union Local 49 guys in yellow t-shirts [...]
Remember when some kid told you that tennis balls had poison gas in them, and if you cut them open you would die? This became a widespread belief, or credo among my childhood friends. A credo may have some elements of truth, or sound true, or it can be [...]
As communicators, we know words matter. They influence whether we are attracting people to a new idea or unconsciously turning them off. Naming the “People’s Bailout Campaign," by a coalition of groups, is one example where we could have done better with our words. Why? Because the campaign name [...]
