How Do We Talk About The Weather? Heat Waves?

“Earth reaches hottest day ever recorded 4 days in a row,” ABC News reported. It comes day after day now, yet we seem to yawn and go about our day as if it’s business as usual. The heat story leads newscasts, accompanied by the proverbial videos of kids in sprinklers and community pools, stories about people overheating, and tips from doctors for how to handle it, accompanied by their admonitions to use sunscreen and “be careful out there.”

Then we go about our normal day, buying cases of plastic water bottles to stay cool, using plastic bags to carry our groceries, driving around in our gas-guzzling SUVs, and ordering stuff online that’s delivered in packaging-heavy boxes or styrofoam to-go boxes by emissions-producing cars, trucks and vans. We seem oblivious to the connection between our choices and the oppressive heat, devastating hurricanes, floods, droughts and wildfires.

But this weather is not normal.

It’s very dangerous and its Planet Earth telling us it is dangerously overheating and we need to do something urgently to stop it. Now.

What’s it going to take for planet-friendly habits to become the norm?

So, what’s going to get the mass of consumers, the public, to take the climate crisis – or whatever you want to call it – more seriously and address it in their own choices? In what and how they buy stuff, what they drive, and how they vote?

As Freya Williams, the former head of OligvyEarth and now CEO of Futerra North America, explained to the Sun Valley Forum recently, we need to focus on “Framing The World We Want.” Quoting cognitive linguist George Lakoff, she added that, “Frames” are “Mental structures that shape the way we see the world.”

Williams and other creatives – from ad agencies and activist nonprofit organizations, as well as television and film producers, journalists, gamers, and in-house communications experts – who “get” the urgency of climate change are applying their craft to shifting consumers and communities towards climate-friendly behaviors, policies and initiatives.

Here are 6 new strategies many creatives are exploring now.

Most are from recent lively discussions and demonstrations at the Sun Valley Forum (SVF), founded by Christensen Global CEO Aimée Christensen. SVF brought together a few hundred top leaders and change agents in the climate, energy, sustainability, ESG – environment, social, governance – space to share best practices for accelerating the transition to a climate positive, equitable economy. (Full disclosure: The author was an emcee and moderator at the Sun Valley Forum.):

Ø Leverage gaming: Because 3 billion people – all ages, races, genders, socio-economic levels and locations – now play videogames, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Center for Resilience (aka Arsht-Rock) at the Atlantic Council has teamed up with videogame designers, including those from Minecraft and Call of Duty, to create the Arsht-Rock Center of Gaming Excellence to help communities design their own games with “evidence-based interventions on climate resilience action and adaptation.”

Ø Name heat waves: Arsht-Rock has also developed a naming system for heat waves as a strategy to get people to prepare for them better and save lives. “1200 people died in a heat wave that was two days,” Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director of Arsht-Rock and SVP of the Atlantic Council, told the Forum. “We now have evidence that naming a heat wave, we named heatwave Zoe last year in Seville (Spain), it had immense power and it got people to change their behavior, call their neighbors, and take the advice of the government more than they would have if it didn't have a name.” Why a name? “When you give it a name, it gets a persona and you use all the PR tools that we have, and people say, ‘Hey, this thing's serious. I'm going to change what I'm doing today,’ ” she added.

Ø Integrate climate into scripts, elegantly: Just as screenwriters and directors brought in former White House operatives and or national security experts to make sure “The West Wing” and “NCIS” were credible, they are tapping climate scientists and behavioral scientists to explore integrating the messages about climate change and our personal choices into scripts.

Ø Develop a new narrative: At the Forum, Williams and Brady Walkinshaw, CEO of Earth Alliance, a nonprofit formed by Laurene Powell Jobs and Leonardo DiCaprio, suggested using positive terminology and stories instead of the “crisis” and “doom” language. They said talking about “possibility” and showing how each of us has “agency”were key to motivating people.

Ø Use carrots vs. sticks: Experts at the SVF suggested focusing more on the “benefits” of mitigating actions, as “carrots” (the positive) vs. the pain or “sticks” (or negative). Those benefits might include access to some federal funding, including from the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the new jobs and business opportunities being created by addressing climate change.

Ø Re-evaluate word choice: What language works to engage and activate the public to make choices that reduce their environmental impact? That’s a question many are wrestling with, including what words to use to circumvent politicization. A session last year at Planet Word Museum with the British author Alice Bell pointed out how terms like “sustainable” confuse the average consumer. The key is to talk to people about the impact on their daily lives and families.

Will any of it work? We don’t know, but the planet is telling us that what we’re doing isn’t working fast enough.