Why Communicating Climate Change Continues To Confound Us
It’s the personal, stupid.
Every year, more and more Americans tell pollsters they believe in climate change,yet insufficient action has been taken by business and government to solve the problem. Welcome to the world of the communicating climate change action as seen by Americans of every stripe since Al Gore raised the profile of the issue in his 2000 campaign for the Presidency.
Great strides on critical climate change issues like reduced consumption from energy efficiency and higher gas mileage standards are welcome news. So is the dramatic drop in the price of solar energy and the retirement of coal-generated power plants. Still, it’s fair to say progress has been painfully slow and halting.
There’s been plenty of prognostication as to the why this transition is so difficult from a policy perspective, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole here.
But as a marketing strategist who spent 20 years creating messages for politicians before I transitioned to working for cleantech companies,I’d like to point out a few of the climate change communications boogeymen that bedevil the movement to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and how we can turn on some lights to make the nighttime creepers disappear.
