Messaging Solutions

Messaging

With the explosion of material online and in social media, linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff points out that framing the conversation properly is always important see:

“Don’t Think of an Elephant!” – George Lakoff, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014

Television & Video Resources

• Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change is a public media initiative from WNET in New York reporting on the human impact of climate change, designed to provide context, scientifically sound information, and fact-based journalism to audiences across every platform of public media. It also focuses on stories of exciting new frontiers of scientific innovation in resilience, mitigation, and clean energy.

• WNET (Thirteen) are producers of the PBS P&P series on the ‘Sinking Cities’ of Miami, London, New York and Tokyo. Many other stories are covered in ‘Original Features’ and segments of other shows.

• The The Climate Reality Project offers "7 of the Best TEDTalks on Climate Change'. One has a message from Greta Thurnberg.

• CNBC Sustainable Energy has their own YouTube Channel which includes this video on organizations that want to make the world a more sustainable place:

• “Why we're heading for a 'climate catastrophe” is an episode of BBC Newsnight

• The Years Project offers a series of documentaries beginning with "Years of Living Dangerously, Season 1 Episode 1: Dry Season"

Other Online Resources

Much good information at Global Climate Change, Vital Signs of the Planet from NASA:

https://climate.nasa.gov/

Likewise from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

https://www.noaa.gov/climate

https://www.climate.gov/

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/

To help with discussions, from VOX, on May, 2019

12 excuses for climate inaction and how to refute them

The Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community has some extensive materials as part of a Green New Deal workshop curriculum

See more on Messaging.

Newsletters

• Climate Fwd from the New York Times

• Inside Climate News Weekly

• E&E News

• GreenFire report from the New Mexico Environmental Law Center

• GreenMatters

• New Mexico Climate Action

• One.Five climate newsletter from Time

The Audience: ‘Opinions’ Differ DRAFT

According to the IPCC, the biggest impediment to predicting what will happen with global warming is how people will respond. Political will is largely absent but there are signs as of 2019 that this is changing. Moving the ‘Neutrals’ below is expected to be a key factor in any campaign.

Several types of responses seem common when raising concerns about the climate crisis:

Response	Philosophy	Working For or Against	Percent of Electorate
Right, I agree, what can I do?	concerned supporters	For
It’s a matter of national security, we need to have a plan.	patriots	For
Oh, no not again I’m so tired of hearing about climate change, I don’t want to think about it.	apathetics	Neutral
It’s fine the techies will find a solution and all will be well.	optimists	Neutral
I agree but it’s too late, there’s nothing we can do, let me go.	fatalists	Neutral
It’s even worse we’re all going to die.	extinctionists	Neutral
I agree but it’s all part of God’s plan, relax.	evangelicals	Neutral
It’s all bunk, it’s all natural variation.	anti-science deniers	Against
It’s a dark conspiracy by liberals trying to impose a socialist agenda.	right wing fanatics	Against
Doing anything when it’s probably not a problem anyway is going to destroy the economy and jobs – don’t even think about the GND, we can’t afford it.	Fossil fuel industry and their beneficiaries, wealthy conservatives	Against

An analysis of these types would allow us to construct targeting messaging. Areas of analysis might include by Rep, Dem, Ind, etc,; by Members of Congress; by demographics, etc. etc.; by State.