The climate issue is a propaganda war. Why are the villains winning?
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The climate issue is a propaganda war. Why are the villains winning?
And what can we do to reframe the most important issue of our time?
“We’re in a propaganda war, but only one side is on the battlefield.” — David Fenton
If you read one thing today, please read this piece about the climate movement’s failure to compete with fossil fuel-funded propaganda on climate change.
From The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland:
Like the tobacco industry before it, oil and gas has sought to persuade the global public that they can’t be sure the climate crisis is real or human-made or that serious. It’s been hugely effective. To take just one number: only about one in seven Americans understands that there is a consensus among climate scientists, defined as more than 90% having “concluded that human-caused global warming is happening”.
Fossil fuel companies have spent billions to deceive the public and delay action. Using every technique of advertising, communication and marketing, they have campaigned relentlessly to sow doubt about their destructive product. Yet the climate movement has not risen to the communication challenge.
Writes Freedland:
Of course, this connects to a perennial problem for the left – which so often makes its case using statistics and abstract concepts, rather than simple images and emotion. (Think of the remain campaign.) Fenton urges the climate community to speak of pollution – a word everyone gets – and to settle on the image of a “blanket of pollution trapping heat on Earth”. Every oil and gas emission makes that blanket thicker – and all that trapped heat helps cause floods and start fires, he says.
FrameLab readers are no doubt familiar with this particular problem. Back in 2018, we discussed climate communication failures with David Fenton on the FrameLab podcast (click here to listen).
The issue: Communications from climate groups tend to be bogged down in policy speak, lingo and scientific factoids that lack the power to activate or convince. While asking the world to believe the science on climate change, climate activists have far too often ignored the science of communication.
But it’s not too late, and there may yet be hope. Read Freedland’s piece at the Guardian to find out more.
Related Readings:
Big oil has sold lies about the climate crisis for decades. Now we must sell the truth, Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
Climate Change: A Communications Failure. David Fenton, The Hill
Failure to Communicate: Key Lessons for Progressives. FrameLab Newsletter
The climate issue is a propaganda war. Why are the villains winning?
Yes! As Freedland suggests and urges - use repetition in order to get the facts out abt the climate catastrophe. This is exactly what you’ve always urged us to practice, George Lakoff.
I think Freeland's proposed language is at least a decade too late. Pay attention and you'll see that the propaganda war has shifted.
The more insidious new front is to convince people that even if you believe in the existential threat, there's nothing an individual -- or even a single country -- can do to affect it.
It's a believable and powerful (and completely false) argument.
If just a fraction of Americans decided to eat less beef, reduce food waste, go electric, install solar, reduce plane travel, etc, it would cover half our commitment to the Paris Climate Accords.
And as the largest polluter and the strongest economy, it is absolutely incumbent on the US to lead the way, and it will have a huge impact whether other countries follow along or not.
But watch the rhetoric. They aren't trying to deny climate change anymore. They've moved on to convincing people that their actions don't matter.