This week, we are releasing the first landscape assessment of climate communicators in the US and Canada. The project was conducted in collaboration with the folks at The Talking Climate Collaborative and maps out the ecosystem of climate communication.
For anyone who doesn’t understand why communicating about climate change is so important, remember that the media (ie all the places where you pick up information in your daily lives) doesn’t tell us what to think, but it is does tell us what to think about. In other words, the more people communicate about climate change, the more people will have it on their minds. Unfortunately there numerous vested interests that are working to silence climate voices, which will limit critiques of the extractive industries that are most responsible for the climate crisis.
Those who are talking about climate change report working alone, with limited funds, and are relatively isolated. (for more on this point and why climate change is not political, so people need to stop talking about it like it is, check out my new piece with Katharine Hayhoe in TIME Magazine).
As we were preparing for the report’s release, the climate world lost a huge voice: Joe Romm–founder of Climate Progress and climate communicator extraordinaire–passed away last week.
I first met Joe in the late 1990s while I was conducting research about domestic responses to the Kyoto Protocol for my dissertation–his was one of the first interviews I did in the US. Since then, our paths have crossed a number of times. In fact, Joe spoke at our event about the importance and potential of environmental storytelling just last year, sharing his decades of experience with climate storytelling.
At the event, he told us about his recent experiences hosting a podcast with his daughter. The podcast focused on decoded why Taylor Swift’s songs are so effective and uses those lessons to explain how we all can be better communicators.
In memory of Joe, and because the lessons in the podcast are even more valuable today then when he recorded them, I recommend we all give Decoding Taylor Swift a listen!
Dana R Fisher 