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Is the Marlboro Man Really the Identity We Need To Help With Climate Collapse?

2022-11-28T20:04:24+00:00November 27th, 2022|Climate Communications, Climate Strategy, Identity|

I saw an ad for a Chevy truck last night. It had all the requisite touch points: the deep base male voice-over, the truck driving up an impossible mountain, a female passenger adoring the ride, and by association, her driver. What caught my attention was the line “… equipped [...]

The One Question Every Climate Activist Needs To Ask…

2023-01-21T16:57:31+00:00August 21st, 2022|Climate Communications, Climate Strategy, Framing|

In the late 1950s, Phillip Morris & Co. hired Leo Burnett Advertising to change the image of their feminine filtered cigarettes to make them more masculine. Filtered cigarettes were a technical ruse. They were supposed to be healthier and were mostly smoked by women. Burnett launched one of history’s [...]

What the Climate Movement Is Missing With the New IRA Climate Bill

2022-08-18T15:57:07+00:00August 12th, 2022|Climate Communications, Climate Strategy, Environmental Messaging|

… And We Better Figure It Out Fast As liberals, progressives and climate activists we are busy analyzing and dissecting the new (poorly named) “Inflation Reduction Act” climate bill. Does it contain too many giveaways to fossil fuel companies? Is it enough? How much will it lower our carbon [...]

How to Frame the Right’s Bad Climate Ideas and Delay

2022-08-02T15:30:29+00:00July 24th, 2022|Climate Communications, Climate politics, Climate Strategy, Environmental Messaging, Framing, Language|

“We can no longer tolerate Republican’s bankrupt delay on climate.” Do you get an image or feeling on the quality of their delay from this sentence? If we want our ideas to spread, we must use words that create images and feelings and connect them to stories and narratives [...]

What’s Your Strategy for These Words of Climate Delay?

2022-11-04T14:29:22+00:00June 27th, 2022|Climate Change Denial and Misinformation, Climate Communications, Environmental Messaging, Language|

“We may not know what lies ahead, but it’s only human to search for it.” – Chevron This is the concluding sentence from a recent Chevron ad I saw. Seems innocuous. It’s lofty and inspirational and would likely slip past, except it raised my “cow waste” detector. Not many [...]

Bigfoot and Jackalope – Moving Beyond Reactive Climate Campaigns

2021-10-20T14:56:54+00:00October 10th, 2021|Actions You Can Take, Climate Communications, Climate politics, Climate Strategy|

Let’s say we wake up and find out that Jackalope are going extinct because they are being eaten by Bigfoot. After all, they are a favorite delicacy of Bigfoot. What do we do? We probably start a Save the Jackalope campaign... of course. We have to make people aware [...]

Thelma and Louise, Personal Action, and Climate Responsibility

2021-06-23T19:23:21+00:00June 20th, 2021|Actions You Can Take, Climate Change Denial and Misinformation, Framing, Reasons for Acting|

My next personal act of climate responsibility is to limit my driving to no more than 6,000 miles per year. For those without cars this may still seem like a lot. I'd rather not have to use a car. Maybe this will be hard? We’ll see. In December of [...]

“Children, be worried when they call you America’s most valuable natural resource.”

2021-03-03T16:43:47+00:00March 2nd, 2021|Climate Communications, Climate politics, Climate Strategy, Environmental Messaging|

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 [...]

Do I Smell a New Methane Gas Frame Being Created?

2023-02-15T17:58:53+00:00January 29th, 2021|Actions You Can Take, Climate Communications, Climate politics, Climate Strategy, Environmental Messaging|

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 [...]

What Happens To Our Climate When Democracy Dies? (And what we can do about it.)

2020-11-26T19:39:34+00:00November 23rd, 2020|Climate Communications, Climate politics, Climate Strategy, Environmental Messaging|

(Photo by Angus Mordant/www.angusmordant.com ) If you are a climate activist, or care about what happens to the earth or environment, then read this carefully. Our democracy is on the endangered species list. It is dying. And when it does, there will be no hope for the climate, ourselves, or [...]

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