The Epic New Era of Climate Communications

By Daniel Simons

 

According to environmental royalty, Sir David Attenborough, “saving the planet is now a communications challenge.”

What did the soon-to-be centenarian mean by that?

Two things:

On the one hand, decades of mounting scientific evidence pointing to climate and biosphere breakdown is now so overwhelming that the world’s leading scientists are resorting to getting themselves arrested in order to sound the alarm.

On the other hand, we know we have the solutions to these existential threats are at our fingertips.

Research organisations like Carbon Tracker tell us that current renewables technology can meet world energy demand 100 times over.

Paul Hawken, founder of Project Drawdown and Regeneration says we can end the crisis in one generation – all we have to do is get out of our own way and act.

So, in 2025, with the leader of the free world running on “drill, baby, drill,” pulling out of climate agreements and even banning mere mentions of climate change – all while climate-fuelled disasters are hitting harder and faster than even the worst predictions, you’d be forgiven for feeling like you’re living inside Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up.

It’s heartbreaking, and infuriating, and to be hurling ourselves off the cliff like lemmings while the answers are at our feet feels absurd.

But while the WTF-athon of news headlines may be pummeling even the most devoted changemakers into thumb-sucking catatonia, some of the world’s leading communicators are rising to the challenge.

An explosive groundswell of thought wizards and culture-makers are hell-bent on ushering in a new era of sanity – one where we outgrow the glitches in our bodies and brains

The Purpose Disruptors are holding summits to reimagine advertising in the Anthropocene, and A New Zero World is building a global hive mind for climate action.

In 2024 they released a 400-page guidebook titled A New Era in Climate Communications. That same year, they released a global campaign platform called EPIC (Earth Public Information Collaborative), designed to unite brands, thought leaders, and cultural creators around a single rallying cry: “a campaign for all of us, including all of us.”

Organisations like Creatives for Climate and Good Energy are empowering writers and artists to inject sustainability messaging directly into the mainstream  through entertainment and pop culture.

Old-school climate communications relied on facts and fear – assuming awareness would lead to action. That doesn’t cut it anymore.

A recent mega study led by 250 researchers across 63 countries that featured 59,000 people found that while doom and gloom messaging was the single most effective strategy for increasing sharing of information, it was also, “the absolute worst for motivating action, and among the worst for changing climate change beliefs or support for climate change policies.”

Today’s communicators understand that knowledge doesn’t equal action, and urgency without agency is a losing strategy.

The fear-inducing stats and drowning polar bears are out; emotionally intelligent, audience-savvy storytelling is in.

The new wave of climate communications is less about scaring people and more about moving them. It draws on the latest in neuroscience, marketing, and pop culture to create stories that resonate with identity, stir imagination, and make taking action feel not just possible, but irresistible.

But with social media algorithms doping us with dopamine, Netflix tempting us with infinite years of streaming content, and fossil fuel giants spending billions to drill holes into our heads, how can climate communicators cut through?

What makes ideas stick like toffee, go viral like MrBeast, and spark the kind of action our moment demands?

“A lot of climate communications is just giving people another problem they don’t need,” says Jonathan Wise, co-founder of the Purpose Disruptors.

“Instead, we need to understand what people want, and show that what we’re selling helps them get there.”

Even though inconvenient truths and cries of urgency might motivate some people to strike on Fridays or close down airports with the Extinction Rebellion, a large percentage of the population feel too overwhelmed with the struggles of daily life to take on another burden.

According to Wise, focusing on positive outcomes is “classic advertising” that we haven’t seen enough of in climate communications.

The strategy comes in two main forms: selling the health, social, and financial benefits of planet-friendly products, or creating space for big, bold, inspiring visions of what a better world might look like.

When the future feels less like a Doomsday clock and more like a blank canvas for our dreams, we’re more inspired and empowered to act.

Wise and his team of fellow disruptors helped to launch an Agency for Nature,  championed the Change The Brief Alliance, founded the Reimagining Advertising Summit, and in 2022 they produced Good Life 2030.

Launched in collaboration with Insight Climate Collective, Race to Zero, Stories for Life and over 100 industry professionals, Good Life 2030 was a campaign aimed at inspiring members of the advertising industry to create compelling visions of the future.

After gathering insights from the public, the Purpose Disruptors developed a creative brief for advertising agencies. The project culminated with The Good Life 2030 documentary and a selection of the short films being showcased at COP26 and live-streamed globally.

With the rise of solutions-focused content like Damon Gameau’s 2040, the Netflix originals Kiss The Ground, and Zack Effron’s Down to Earth, and the increasing popularity of uplifting and empowering ‘actionism’ like Anne Therese Gennari’s Climate Optimism, Solitaire Townsend’s The Solutionists and Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism, it’s clear there is a growing hunger for upbeat, energising, and aspirational ways to engage with the climate emergency.

Other great campaigns that showcase the power of positive futuring include Chobani’s Dear Alice, which tapped into the visionary allure of Solar Punk animation and explored ideas like reverence for nature and intergenerational responsibility, and Gripping Films’ Imaginefor1minute masterpiece, which asks viewers to take a minute to close their eyes and picture the future they want.

What do a man breaking the sound barrier with his own body and a cyclist performing jump-stunts over ten carriages of a moving train have in common?

They both form the basis of viral Red Bull videos that have racked up billions of media impressions.

If we can channel that level of creativity and bat-shit crazy ambition into selling a fizzy drink, we can channel the same energy into solving our planetary woes.

Beyond Hurricane Sandy and Australia’s Black Summer bushfires, we’ve seen some truly spectacular attempts to capture public attention for environmental causes.

In 2022, Adidas teamed up with Parley for the Oceans to build a floating tennis court made from recycled plastic.

Back in 2016, Italian superstar composer Ludovico Einaudi performed a haunting piano piece on a floating iceberg in front of Norway’s Wahlenbergbreen glacier.

Filmed as part of a Greenpeace campaign, the awe-inspiring visuals drew international attention, amplifying the voices of over eight million people calling for Arctic protection.

Spectacular impact campaigns don’t always need the big budgets of corporate giants or international NGOs.

Sometimes, it starts with one person and a razor. For over two years Jimmy HalfCut has walked around with half his beard shaved to represent the half of Earth’s forests that have already been destroyed.

What began as a bold visual metaphor quickly became a grassroots movement that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for reforestation projects.

Luke Dean-Weymark and his wife Natalie Dean-Weymark are co-founders of the purpose-led communications agency Compass Studio.

When multinationals TGS and SLB-Schlumberger announced plans to conduct seismic testing and gas exploration across 7.7 million hectares of the Southern Ocean, Compass teamed up with the icecream-activist B-Corp  Ben & Jerry’s and the Surfrider Foundation to put a stop to it.

In an era of endless information and short attention spans, they knew they needed a creative spectacle if they wanted to make a splash.

The Great Paddle Out saw 1,200 placard-wielding surfers take to the waters in Torquay, on the Victorian Surf Coast, setting an unofficial world record with their collective protest.

“It wasn’t just a protest. It was a striking visual statement that brought community, media, politicians and other decision-makers together. Over a thousand humans paddling into the ocean sent a message that couldn’t be ignored,” said Dean-Weymark.

“The visual aspect of the campaign resulted in over 120 pieces of media coverage, reaching the eyes, ears and hearts of tens of millions of Australians around the country.”

The campaign didn’t just get eyeballs. It worked.

“Six months after the Paddle Out, the multinational corporation TGS formally withdrew their application to conduct seismic blasting off Australia’s southern coastline.”

Robert Forstemann is known around the world for having legs the size of tree trunks. So when the hulk-like Olympic cyclist had to peddle a specially modified stationary bike ‘until he could taste blood’ just to create enough power to make one slice of toast, it sent a powerful message to viewers around the world.

Through the Toaster Challenge, audiences learnt that it would take one Robert to toast a slice of bread, 180 Roberts to power a car, and 43000 Roberts to power an airplane. It was a heart-pounding reminder of just how much energy we take for granted every day.

This charged and powerful imagery is exactly what Juliet Mallat thinks is needed to stir change.

Mallat founded The Climate Propagandist with a mission “to drive climate action through persuasive design, language, and storytelling.” After being dismayed by the way fossil fuel companies have manipulated us for decades, she decided to build a toolkit to help climate communicators fight back.

“To create a powerful message that really has an impact it needs to grab people’s attention and it needs to be shareable. The best way to create shareable content is to tap into culture, community and what I call currency – which is things that relate to identity or social status,” she said.

“But before your content can go viral and become part of culture it needs to break through the noise. “People don’t remember complex ideas, so if you want to make your message stick, it’s got to be simple, emotional, unexpected and easily digestible.”

Powerful imagery and emotional symbolism inspire change. From the mountains of shoes left on city streets when the Student Strikers couldn’t protest due to the COVID lockdowns, to the piercing artworks like Ice Watch, and the Climate Clock, great imagery can turn us inside out within seconds. But simplifying a message isn’t always about symbolism. The words we use matter too.

Ross Findon is a consultant and Director of Communications at New Zero World. He’s spent decades mastering the art of strategic messaging.

“Everybody is super busy and bombarded with information. So if you want to cut through that and find ways to stick. It’s really important to break down your idea into really clear terms and then show how the idea connects to people’s lived experience and their everyday reality.”

When Findon was head of media and messaging at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation he was tasked with refining the messaging for their circular economy initiatives. This was at a time before anyone had heard of the term.

“In the end we managed to get it down to three words: eliminate, circulate and regenerate,” said Findon.

“We all know that in speech, and in communications, three is the magic number. If you can get your concept into 3 principles successfully, and if you can get that into three words, you’ve got a really good chance of connecting.”

Three words might be the magic number, but a couple of the most powerful examples of climate communications managed to get it down to just two – Prince Ea’s spoken word masterpieces Three Seconds and I’m Sorry have inspired tens of millions of viewers to reconsider humanity’s relationship with our planet.

Let’s face it, the potential collapse of civilization is heavy. Even the most passionate environmentalists want to stick their heads in the sand when the stats get too serious. A little bit of humour can help bypass our defenses and transmit important info through the back door.

A joint project between Nick Oldridge and The Utopia Bureau, The Climate Science Breakthrough is pioneering a new approach.

According to the Breakthrough team, “scientists are brilliant at diagnosing the climate crisis, but they’re not trained to boil it down to basics.

“There are lots of great communicators out there, but they don’t all understand the complex science. So the Breakthrough Project helps to translate it with the help of ‘the world’s least serious people – comedians.”

Before the project was launched, the Utopian Bureau couldn’t get media agents to return their calls. Soon after launching, their comedic climate shorts had clocked up over 9 million views on twitter alone, been shared by Ellie Goulding, Thom Yorke and Dawn French, and covered by everyone from CNN to Sky News.

Apple has also taken a bite from the climate comedy playbook. Being one of the largest ‘rebel’ corporations on the planet, the onus was on the multinational to show leadership in the fight against the climate crisis.

Apple TV produced the world’s first ever climate series, Extrapolations and incorporated climate into their hit shows like Ted Lasso. When they wanted to announce their 2030 sustainability goals to the world, they needed to make sure that it wasn’t going to be as boring as the opening few scenes of Severance.

Their TV commercial 2030 Status, Mother Nature, was a witty, lighthearted way to announce their first carbon-neutral product and their plans to be fully carbon neutral by 2030.

Starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer as Mother Nature and featuring a cameo from CEO Tim Cook, the boardroom-based mockumentary turned sustainability announcements into a mini sit-com.

Jason Aten, writing for Inc. Magazine, described it as a cringe-worthy but brilliant move that allowed Apple to highlight its climate goals while subtly flexing its ESG leadership and calling out the competition.

Another classic example of comedic messaging comes from The Climate Ad Project – an initiative created and supported by NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus.

Their short film Murder Offsets parodied an old fashioned murder mystery show to call out carbon offsetting as a form of greenwashing.

When it comes to tackling heavy topics, humour can help penetrate our defences, but there’s nothing quite as satiating as ridiculing blatant hypocrisies, or skewing ‘bad actors’ with a razor sharp barb.

From Patagonia’s Shitthropocene documentary that points the finger at fast fashion, to Juice Media’s brutally Honest Government adverts, savvy culture-makers know how to make good ideas go viral by naming and shaming through parody.

One of the best examples of climate satire comes — not surprisingly — from someone who used to be the head writer on Saturday Night Live

After the success of Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries released a faux Chevron Ad that went viral instantly.

Their ‘brutally honest’ spoof featured zingers like, “We at Chevron straight up don’t give a single F*ck about you, your weird children or your stupid ratty ass dog,” and, “we have billions and billions of dollars to pay for this commercial time, this cheesy footage, and this bullsh*t music, all so that you will be lulled into a catatonic state that makes you forget one single fact, Chevron is actively murdering you every day.”

Striking a chord with a fed-up public, the video reached over five million views on twitter in two days and inspired Adam McKay to establish Yellow Dot Studios, the world’s first anti-bullsh*t media company.

Focusing mostly on short form viral clips for social media, Yellow Dot creates content aimed at roasting evil corporations before they roast the planet.

Oli Frost is a purpose-driven mischief maker from the UK. After releasing a series of climate-themed music videos that reached millions, Frost went on to launch a fake advertising company, an ‘asset management’ game and OgilvyLand, a Fossil Fuel Funfair created to celebrate ‘the brave warm world’ that Ogilvy’s Fossil Fuel clients are building.

Frost’s Atmospheric Agency was launched in collaboration with Glimpse and Utopia Bureau to ‘give clients the social license they need to Keep the Fire Burning,” and marketed itself with the slogan, “The climate is changing, business shouldn’t have to.”

Confusing and enraging audiences on social media who couldn’t tell if the campaigns were serious or satire (which says something about the state of the world), Atmospheric Agency sent a tree called ‘twiggy’ into space to, “show the world that they care almost as much about trees as they do profits”.

The agency also ‘created’ the world’s first carbon neutral tyre fire, an all-electric tree logger, and a bio-plastic industrial fishing net.

While Frost doesn’t think satire is the only pathway to action, he’s witnessed its power first hand:

“I choose to talk about the climate crisis through satire because it’s the way I’m used to talking about things. For an issue that needs to reach several billion people, we need a range of tones. That said, it does seem to be effective.

“Last year we had hundreds of thousands of views on videos about asset management, and fossil fuel advertising, not the kind of thing that’d usually work on TikTok,” he said.

Before Ross Findon was creating epic communications for A New Zero world and helping to shape the circular economy, he was a journalist.

“The rule that we lived by then, was, ‘nobody ever stopped reading a story that their name was in’. The way I interpret that in the work I do now is I try to make sure people can see themselves in the story or idea I’m trying to communicate.”

This appreciation for the relationship between identity and climate action has given rise to a massive surge in new types of ‘actionist’ groups. Farmers for Climate Action, Parents For Future, SchoolStrike4Climate, Doctors for The Environment – there seems to be a new identity-based group sprouting every second.

From sporting projects like Sports Environment Alliance and Football4Climate to music initiatives like No Music on a Dead Planet, Green Music Australia and  KPOP4Planet, there are endless new ways to tap into identity and help people to see themselves as part of a new climate narrative.

Creatives for Climate is the world’s largest and most diverse network of creative professionals dedicated to climate action. With over 50,000 followers and 5000 members of the Climate Creative Hub, the burgeoning organisation is active in over 90 countries, and their Anti-Greenwash Guide reached almost half a million people.

Recognising that climate communication was “failing to connect,” Lucy von Sturmer founded Creatives for Climate with the aim of exploring how “innovative, inclusive, and values-driven communication strategies can better reach people, resonate with their experiences, and provide tangible steps towards action.”

This shift in how we tell stories, and who we tell them about, was at the heart of the recent WorkforClimate campaign, which spotlighted everyday professionals stepping into climate leadership.

“By demonstrating the success stories of WorkforClimate Academy graduates and showcasing real people with regular and relatable jobs, we were able to help professionals to connect to their inner activist and debunk the often negative or risky connotations associated with the term,” said Emma Webber, Head of PR and Communications at Good&Proper.

These types of solutions-focused projects aren’t just great for inspiring action,they make headlines.

Following the success of the WorkforClimate campaign, Good&Proper partnered with Regen Melbourne—a visionary organisation working to bring doughnut economics to life—to take on an audacious challenge: transforming one of Australia’s most polluted rivers into a swimmable waterway.

Blending the magical ingredients of local action, infectious hope, and an ‘earth shot’ vision that turned urban transformation into a collective dream, the campaign quickly became front page news.

“We know the media are hungry for grass-roots impact stories,” said Webber, “and by sharing them we’re also helping spread awareness of place-based action and community connection.”