How to Communicate About Climate to Inspire and Drive Collective Action

Guest Blog Post: By Shannon Brescher Shea

Protestors rally in front of the White House in 2024 to support a climate lawsuit brought against the United States government for children's futures.

Photo credit: Shannon Brescher Shea

A brutal heat wave just taxed people’s bodies and air conditioning throughout the Washington DC area. A haze of toxic smoke recently wreathed the Washington Monument. “Why don’t people do anything about climate change?!” is the natural reaction for any environmentalist. We want to believe that if people witness enough impacts or have the right information, they will take action. Unfortunately, it’s just not true. Whether it’s individual action like eating less meat or collective action like going to a protest, simply providing information about climate change and its effects doesn’t change human behavior.

However, this doesn’t mean all is lost. Instead, we need to be strategic about how, when, and why we communicate about climate change. After all, we need people to take both individual and collective action to move forward. 

While 26% of Americans say they are “alarmed” about climate change, only 7% of people have joined a campaign to persuade elected officials to take action. But with the right communications, environmental activists can motivate and empower more people to take collective action and inspire change.

That’s why I wrote the Climate Communication to Drive Collective Action guidebook. As a long-time community organizer, I’m always trying to figure out how to get more people to join in, whether on the local, regional or national levels. Although there are a lot of tips out there about influencing individual behavior, there is much less on inspiring participation in collective action. This handbook highlights best practices based both on findings from social science research and experts in the field. 

In the process of reading more than 40 resources and interviewing 17 climate communicators, I found three major principles for successful communication: self-perception, vision, and perceived impact. Self-perception requires helping someone believe that they are the type of person who takes action and that people who are important and similar to them do so as well. Vision involves evoking emotion and telling stories that describe a better future. Perceived impact means that people believe both in the ability of the group to make change and the personal benefit from participating. 

Key Tips

There are simple ways to use these principles. Here are some tips to help you hit these points:

• Emphasize that people are not alone in their concern about climate change. Many people believe they are the only ones who care.

• Show people that you value their skills and perspectives. Don’t shame people for lack of knowledge or experience.

• Tie climate change to other values your audience holds, including social justice. 

• Create and emphasize affinity groups, such as neighbors, retirees, parents, or religious communities. 

• Demand changes that are specific, concrete, measurable, and significant. Provide a single, clear call to practical action and directions on how to participate.

• For every challenge that you describe, share an encouraging counterpoint. For example, if you talk about how climate change is contributing to wildfires, also discuss how people are working to reduce that impact. 

• Use active voice to point out who created and reinforces the systems that cause these problems. 

• Provide opportunities for people to share their stories and form their own visions of the future. One particularly effective technique is for people to write letters that would be delivered in the far future to their children or other loved ones.

• Tell stories of people in your community who are taking action, especially the successes.

• Create social opportunities for people to build relationships.

• Promote opportunities for people to develop and practice desired skills, including expressing themselves creatively.

• Be joyful and fun as appropriate!

Climate Communications Principles In Action

If you are trying to get a friend to come to a protest who has never been to one before, you can talk about how it helps you feel like you are making a difference, how it fulfills values both of you share, and how having a variety of different voices is important (including theirs!). If they like being artistic, you can make signs together. If they want to build community, you can talk to other like-minded people at the protest.

The same ideas apply to outreach events, just on a larger scale. On Earth Day 2025, I organized an event for families at Rockville Town Square with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. We did a scavenger hunt for sustainability related items around the area (ex. a tree, a bike lane, a piece of garbage, a place that doesn’t feel safe to cross the street). We then followed up with an activity where the kids drew pictures for the mayor about items they would like to see more and less of. 

I oriented this activity towards families with young children to connect back to identity, and discussed many parents' vision of a better world for their children. We also had kids and parents imagine practical improvements to the city. To address perceived impact, we described how the pictures would be delivered personally to the mayor, who has the power to make those changes. Several families participated in the event and the mayor welcomed the feedback from myself and my co-organizer Mustafa Abdullah, along with his young daughter. 

Additional Resources

In addition to the guidebook, I also recommend checking out these resources:

• Global Warming’s Six Americas report from the Yale Program on Climate Change

• Talking Climate newsletter from climate scientist and communicator Katherine Hayhoe

• What behavioral strategies motivate environmental action? From the University of Pennsylvania

  
  

Climate change is not a lost cause. Every action we take that can prevent even a fraction of a degree rise helps. But time and energy are limited, so we need to be strategic about how we take action. I hope these tips help you make your communications as effective as possible! 

Shannon Brescher Shea is the creator of the Climate Communication to Drive Collective Action guidebook. She is also the author of the environmental parenting advice book Growing Sustainable Together: Practical Resources to Raise Kind, Engaged, Resilient Children and a newsletter by the same name.