Climate communication is at a crossroads. The consequences of climate change have never been clearer — record-breaking heat, devastating floods, rising insurance costs, and growing pressure on food, water, and energy systems — but the discussion of climate change has gone quiet.
News coverage has fallen by 38% since its peak in 2021, when the issue made headlines around COP26 in Glasgow. Mentions of sustainability on S&P 500 earnings calls have also plummeted by nearly three-quarters. In this era of “climate hushing,” many public and private leaders assume the safe bet is to slip through the “side door,” reframing the discussion around jobs, clean energy, or global competitiveness. There is a growing hesitation to address the problem directly, driven by a spreading perception that climate change is a losing issue.
The latest data challenges this assumption. Climate change is a winning issue with the public — if you talk about it the right way.
At the climate change education nonprofit I chair, Potential Energy Coalition, we’re driven solely by data, ruthlessly evaluating what narratives work, what don’t, and why. We’ve spent thousands of hours in focus groups, surveyed over half a million people, and tested hundreds of messages. Most recently, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, we completed one of the largest climate opinion studies conducted in recent years, surveying more than 83,000 people across the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany and Italy. The findings reveal important truths about what matters to people, the words that deepen divisions, and the ones that can build consensus.
The data is clear: climate change is not a losing issue. Across every country, substantial majorities support government action on climate change. Support extends well beyond traditional environmental constituencies, including many centre-right voters. While many leaders seem to have moved on from climate change, two-thirds of the global public still wants action on the issue.
However, the way we talk about climate change risks losing the audience. For years, public debate has been dominated by technical language that makes perfect sense to policymakers but means very little to everyone else. “Net zero” is the clearest example. It has become one of the defining phrases of global climate policy, yet our research found it to be the least persuasive climate term we tested across six countries. Likewise, phrases such as “green jobs,” “energy transition” or “decarbonisation” often sound abstract, ideological, and distant from everyday life.
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What we need isn’t a massive shying away from the issue, but a new narrative. The underlying policies have support, but the vocabulary around them narrows the audience. We can recapture momentum and broaden support if we take three steps to shift the way we’re telling our stories.
First, the most persuasive messages are the ones that directly focus on the human, material consequences of climate change. When it comes to boosting support for climate action, direct consequence messages focusing on things like rising insurance premiums, worsening pollution, or dangerous heat are 2.6 times as effective as “side-door” messages like clean jobs or innovation. Rather than framing climate as an ideological debate, these messages show it as a real problem with tangible consequences on peoples’ families, health, and finances. Across all six countries, after exposure to just one message, this approach increased support for climate action by at least nine percentage points.
Second, the best messages make the cause concrete by focusing on pollution. Returning to the root cause of climate change — pollution that’s overheating the planet — makes the problem feel significantly more solvable and less polarized than focusing on the vague concept of “climate.” Pollution is tangible. People can see it, breathe it, and understand how to reduce it. When climate change is explained as the consequence of pollution, the problem feels substantially more solvable and significantly less polarising.
Finally, winning narratives make the cure exciting. Public support falls sharply when climate action is framed around bans, mandates and sacrifice. It rises when people see what they gain: unlimited, reliable sources of local power that can lead to more affordable energy, greater energy security, healthier communities, and cleaner places to live. People are much more willing to support building something better than giving something up.
Audiences want climate action, and when they hear about it in clear, human, exciting terms, their support goes even higher. That’s why climate hushing is such a big problem. When businesses stop talking about climate, when political leaders avoid the issue, and when news organizations devote less attention to it, they reinforce the mistaken impression that public concern has faded. When in fact, climate remains a broadly supported issue.
The question is not whether to talk about climate, but how to talk about it in a way that reflects people’s everyday concerns and aspirations. As the consequences of inaction mount, now is not the time to shy away from climate change. Now is the time to cement a new narrative, one that makes the consequences clear, makes the cause concrete, and makes the cure exciting.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit: Julia Volk.
