Climate Change Comms: It’s Time to Get Personal
Last week, we packed our bags and prepared to evacuate our home for the third time in three months, as another vicious wildfire raged just over the horizon line.
Between the Marshall Fire, the NCAR Fire, and the North Shanahan Ridge Fire, it has been a terrifying and heartbreaking few months here in Boulder, Colorado.
It is difficult to articulate the panic of those moments just before the evacuation order comes in. We frantically packed as the billowing smoke and bright orange flames ravaged a beloved landscape just outside our bedroom window.
I grabbed my grandfather’s violin, a necklace from my grandmother, my childhood teddy bear, letters from my brother and a sweater of his, and our wedding album, not knowing what was going to happen.
This is the reality of climate change.
This is what climate change looks like to us.
It is suitcases lined up by the door; it is anxiously monitoring the Twitter feed for evacuation notices; it is deciding in a split second which photos of your grandparents to grab in case this is the last time you get to come home.
If we are to turn the tide on the climate crisis, this is the story we must tell — ours.
A Permanent Address
I’ve worked as a writer for roughly fifteen years, and yet I don’t have the words to express just what Boulder means to me.
I first moved here when I was in my early twenties because I love the mountains, and also love to hike them, ski them, paint them, and photograph them. It was in the shadow of the Flatirons that I found peace of mind and, for the first time, saw my life’s path with clarity.
In the mid-2000s, this newfound clarity carried me east — for nearly a decade — to chase a career rubbing elbows with the policy wonks in Washington, DC.
But Boulder is the only place that has ever felt like home to me, and I was determined to find my way back west. In 2015 — with my husband in tow — I moved back to Boulder, and we purchased our first home here.
Our little townhouse in South Boulder would represent the first time in our adult lives that we could claim to have one of those “permanent addresses,” however, it also marked another first — the first time we would be told to evacuate, forced to flee fast-moving wildfires with what we could gather in roughly 20 minutes’ time.
Dire Warnings Disguised
The historic drought conditions; the extreme winds; the uncertainty; the fear. This is climate change — and according to the latest ominous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last week, it’s going to get worse unless we act decisively and immediately to slash emissions and curb rising global temperatures.
As expected, the usual voices amplified the IPCC report’s release, underscoring the urgency of climate action and echoing the dire warnings of imminent destruction should we fail to act.
And while those messages are undoubtedly true and critical to share, there’s a missing component to these missives — humanity. We as climate change communicators are failing at our central task.
If our means of communicating both the looming threat and the opportunities for action amount to little more than parroting back technical phrases such as “net zero” and rattling off statistics about particles per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, we’ve already failed.
How can we rally a groundswell of support for local solutions, such as community solar gardens and conservation of public lands, for state legislation to slash emissions, and for international treaties to tackle our global plastics crisis if we can’t clearly communicate just what it is we are up against and how it might impact our day-to-day lives?
We must extend beyond statistics and jargon to meaningfully connect the dots, to effectively reach our audience — which is largely non-technical and non-expert — and to spur action.
Our firsthand, on-the-ground experience is the most powerful tool we’ve got.
We must break through the echo chamber and widen the circle, and in my experience, the best way to do that is by speaking from the heart.
This is a call to action.
I challenge my fellow climate change communicators to get personal; to hit a nerve. Inspired action comes from inspired people.
Start by telling your own story.
