The Best Climate Messages Aren’t About Climate

What you will learn from this article:

• Why morality-based climate messaging fails with non-environmentalist audiences, and what to say instead

• How to turn customer anecdotes and data into unforgettable, trust-building stories

• Tactics for reclaiming the narrative from climate denial and disinformation, without taking the bait

“Where do we go from here?” That question echoed through the Climate Week 2025 Communications Town Hall, hosted by Anchin and organized by CommPRO.

It was a fitting theme. Just blocks away at the United Nations General Assembly and other Climate Week events, federal leaders were promoting fossil fuels and dismissing climate change as a hoax. (Spoiler: it’s not.) Against that backdrop, communicators gathered to chart a smarter, more effective path forward.

Materiality over morality

One clear takeaway: stop preaching, start proving.

New data presented at Climate Week NYC from Potential Energy, a nonprofit marketing firm driving public demand for climate solutions, shows that messages about the morality of climate action resonate mainly with audiences already committed to sustainability. Everyone else? They tune out.

The bigger opportunity is materiality — the tangible benefits that renewable energy, electrification, and climate solutions bring to real people. Lower household energy bills. More reliable power grids. Local jobs that can’t be outsourced. These are the stories that cut through skepticism and reach audiences who don’t identify as environmentalists but care about their wallets and communities.

For communicators, this means that effective messaging must evolve. It’s no longer enough to cite rising temperatures or vanishing ice sheets. Instead, communications teams should emphasize practical benefits and localized impacts that make climate progress feel personal.

Make it real

Numbers alone rarely change minds. But one customer’s story about cutting their utility bill in half, backed by a data point or two, can. If you’re a communicator, that means using data to back up narratives — but use numbers like cilantro in your cooking: just enough to add depth, but not so much that it overpowers the dish.

That, too, is backed up by data. Research from Harvard Business School shows that stories are more than twice as likely to be remembered over the course of a day compared with data points alone.

The lesson for communicators is simple: people remember people. That’s your leverage.

Maximize the return

Story development takes time. Don’t waste that investment by leaving stories in a slide deck or single communications channel. Repurpose them — in media pitches, sustainability reports, LinkedIn campaigns, internal Slack channels, even advertising. A consistent story, told across channels, builds trust, credibility, and brand consistency.

For communications professionals navigating tight budgets and shrinking attention spans, this integrated approach maximizes impact without increasing spend.

Fill the void

Finally, don’t let bad-faith narratives dominate the conversation. When climate denial or pollution promotion goes unanswered, it creates confusion and inertia. That doesn’t mean arguing on their terms — it means confidently telling your own story, with the evidence to back it up.

The worst thing communicators can do is stay silent. In the absence of proactive messaging, misinformation wins.

When communicators shift from saving the planet to saving people money, we might just do both.