If this is how @SpeakerPelosi and @TheDemocrats are going to message climate change—"framed" or *hidden behind marginal issues like "habitat" or "clean air, clean water" or even "health" or "morals"—we are going to get KILLED once the fight begins.
THREAD
I know these "frames" poll well in focus groups. But in the field they are ineffective, as experience has shown time and time again.
They are ineffective because they are *decontextualized*. They fail to account for political opposition and the effects of disinformation.
2/n
Even selling climate action as a jobs creator, while powerful in political campaigns (which are largely won and lost on promises of increasing prosperity), will fail once the policy fight begins.
Why?
Again, because it fails to account for opposition and disinformation.
3/n
Further, a single-pronged message is weak, able to be swept aside by the coordinated blitz dropped by GOP politicians and right-wing media once the policy fights begin.
Effective climate messaging is three-pronged, like a stool that supports a platform.
4/n
First: it tells local & human-centered stories that highlight the dangers of climate change on our communities (rural, urban, white, Black, etc). It illustrates that there is a THREAT that America must face.
Great movements in politics are in part about triumph over threat.
5/n
Then, it makes it clear that the GOP is FAILING TO MEET THE THREAT of climate change. Indeed, that *it's making it worse.*
We need to draw the lines of battle, clearly, and show how, as they have let us down on Covid, the GOP is letting Americans down on climate.
6/n
Finally, we need to provide a vision that people can get excited about. This is where job-creation comes in—but the promise of job creation is not enough. Not everybody needs a new job.
7/n
We need to articulate a vision of how climate action will rebuild our economy in a way that will make the majority of Americans more prosperous (not with growth but with fairness) and make our children safe. This is a "morning in America" vision, not just a matter of jobs.
8/n
As part of that vision we need to debunk the threat that acting on climate will "cost" Americans money they don't have. This is perhaps the most crucial element of climate messaging.
9/n
I'm working on that (ha ha) and I'm not ready to launch yet, but I will say that the message cannot just compare the cost of action to the cost of doing nothing, because 1) the cost of action is now, but the cost of inaction is later and 2) people feels costs personally.
10/n
So, again, a three-pronged story (tailored to local markets):
threats
antagonists
inspiration
to attempt to create
worry/fear
outrage/mobilization
hope/desire
11/n
I have a research paper coming out soon that takes an interdisciplinary approach, using sociology, psychology, and literary theory, to develop this form for the content of climate messages.
I am in the process of focus-grouping these forms for empirical data.
12/n
and pps IMHO "climate messaging" is not about getting the public to "care" about climate change; it's about making sure the voters who are *already* concerned about climate change recognize they're in a political fight for their lives and commit to staying in the fight...
even if Republican/fossil-fuel disinformation tries to make them believe they'll be hurt by the passing of climate policy.
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"If this president makes good on his threats to undermine [the] election...many of us will be called to pour into the streets and face the brutality of Trump’s goons. This thought makes me feel ground down and frightened, not brave and defiant."
"In middle age I’ve started to envy those like Lewis who are able to believe in God.
But something I take from reading about the lives of civil rights heroes is that confidence didn’t always precede action. Sometimes it was action’s result."
2/n
"The first time Lewis was arrested, 'a lifetime of absorbed taboos against any kind of trouble with the law quickened into terror.' But on the ride to jail, 'dread gave way to an exhilaration unlike any he had ever known.'"
3/n
Reading @mashagessen's book, Surviving Autocracy, which helps us understand Trumpism historically and theoretically.
Want to note this passage: Hilter began to consolidate power by restricting the press and "expanding the powers of the police" to "detain people w/out charges."
Gessen makes the point that like "no president before him" Trump views "government with contempt" (30). But it strikes me that contempt for govt has been right-wing ideology since the 80's!
Yet as an ideology that hid the real ways right-wingers just used the govt to transfer wealth upward, contempt for govt was less an expression of intellectual principles and more a justiciation for dismantling the welfare state.
This past week Biden gave a major speech about his plan to put fighting #ClimateChange at the center of America's post-Covid recovery.
Foolishly I assumed that the Sunday shows would have discussed this speech today.
How stupid of me. They didn't even mention it.
THREAD
Usually when my research assistant tells me that the broadcast news has failed to cover a climate story, I will do back-channel outreach and then, if that's ignored, @EndClimtSilence will take to Twitter to call out anchors and producers for their climate silence.
2/n
But I'm not going to do that today. I am exhausted. And I am filled with a sense of foreboding, since I've seen this happen before.
When I was first active on Twitter, I wrote a thread about attending a 2015 speech Hillary Clinton gave about climate & manufacturing.👇
The mythological figure Icarus flew with wings of feathers and wax crafted by his father Daedalus, but when he got too close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged to his death in the sea.
The ancient Greeks had a myth for everything.
2/n
Breugel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is also relevant. Note the man plowing in the foreground, totally oblivious to the fallen man in the lower righthand corner, whose legs are still visible above the waves. This is an allegory for business as usual.