I received an email from the New Yorker on a post by Bill McKibben. The subject line was “Big Oil’s Bad Day.” McKibben is the founder of 350.org of which I am an active member. He probably didn’t write the email subject line, but whoever did, fell into a [...]
I spend a lot of time around climate activists helping them with climate communications. Like most of us, their perceptions of where others are in their climate journey are based on where they are themselves. This is a common human characteristic. But if we want to move people to [...]
It’s possible. If your campaign isn’t boring, then don’t read this. But boring can be deadly. We live in an attention-based economy. 1000 messages a day compete for our attention and we respond to buzzes, rings, and the crisis of the minute, to say nothing of commercials of fat [...]
Chance are if you’re posting about climate on Facebook, you have positive intentions (deniers excepted) and want to avert the worst effects for our families, communities, and the planet. But sometimes the way we post has unintended consequences. Here are the three top mistakes we all make, and what [...]
When my granddaughter Sol was five, she asked me a simple question, “Abba, where do babies come from?” “Hmmm?” I thought I knew the answer to this one, but my internal dialogue as a babysitter was “I should probably leave this to her mother?” As a grandfather, I was [...]
Utah Phillips was a musician, a labor organizer, a story teller and a poet. Born in 1935, he spent part of his early life riding the rails. This quote of his is a favorite of mine. I believe it's a commencement address. It still rings true and is even [...]
I’ve seen dozens of climate and environmental campaigns over the last 10 years. Almost every one falls into the issues trap. It’s the tactic of fighting a climate or environmental problem with facts and reason, rather than calling out the underlying violation of our values and telling a story. [...]
Once again, Charlie Brown climate media and communicators are trying to kick Lucy’s proverbial football as she yanks it away. Right wing fossil fuel sponsored Lucy is the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Their football frame is blaming Texas power outages on frozen wind turbines and renewables. What [...]
The wife of a friend of mine died suddenly when she was 40. The mother of an eight-year-old, our daughters were the same age and shared an interest in horses. She was an English teacher, and we both loved books and reading. We’d escape parties to talk about what [...]
Natural Gas, Fossil Gas, or Methane… Which Should We Use? Reality and truth should be bedrocks in climate communications, but what we believe often informs reality. Words influence these beliefs and thus our collective reality. Choose words that unconsciously activate the wrong neurons in the brains of our audience [...]
