If we can't persuade the majority of people that they need real change, really quite soon, none of that tech is going to really matter that much. And so I think it is a people problem, and the failures have mostly been self inflicted. And so I would say, you know, if you talk to people in any form about climate. Take a step back and say, am I actually doing this the most effective way possible, or am I doing this in a way that's going to appeal to other people who already like me? Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 205 of the Climate Confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tinyurl. com slash climate pod. Now in today's episode, I'll be talking to Ollie Burch, who's CEO of a company called Among Others. And in the coming weeks, I'll be speaking to Thom Norman, who's CEO of FarmKind, Professor Annalisa Bracco, who's a professor in Georgia Tech, Ryan Schermerhorn, who's a partner at a law firm who will be talking about IP and patents for climate and Dr. Gemma Green, co founder and exec chair of PowerLedger, where we'll be talking energy autonomy. So some excellent episodes coming up in the coming weeks. And as I said, my special guest today is Ollie from Among Others. So Ollie, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure, and thank you for having me on, Tom. So, I'm Ollie Burch. I'm a communications strategist. I'm co founder of a small agency in London called Among Equals that does a range of things, including sustainability communications, but I'm also communications nerd, and I came into communications because I was disappointed with the way that climate, the climate movement was promoting itself and then I sort of stayed in communications. I didn't really expect to do necessarily. And the last four and a half years since we started the agency, I've kind of been focused on the day to day of running a business and servicing our clients. And I haven't really engaged that much with the climate movement, but recently I sort of stuck my head back above the parapet and I sort of thought things would have moved on a lot and that climate comms would have progressed from sort of four, four and a half years ago, and it really hasn't. And so I'm a agency sort of co founder of communication strategy, but I'm also just sort of annoyed person who cares about climate change and wants it to be communicated better, if that makes sense. Sure. And how did you get into communications and what was the pathway to your setting up Among Equals? So I did a, originally I did a degree in behavioral environmental biology. I was fascinated by that sort of interaction between creatures and people and planet. And then I did a further degree in environmental economics and policy. I really thought that would be the way I was going. And then I met someone who said, Oh, have you thought about sustainability communications? I didn't even know it was a thing. You know, I've been interested in the climate movement and I've done some writing and I was sort of a, annoyed by, at that time it felt like climate movement wasn't really engaging business significantly. We're talking about a while ago now. And so I sort of, you know, I'm going to be in climate, but I'm going to wear a suit and I'm going to work for a big business and I'm going to try and do something from there. And so I went to work for a big global ad agency that had a brand new sort of specialist sustainability team. And I worked there for a while and then through various agencies and got a little bit frustrated with how other agencies were. And when a really good friend of mine and former colleague reached out and said, Hey, let's start an agency during the pandemic. I said, yes. And actually it was perfect time because no one cared that we didn't have an office. It was just like two or three of us working from our bedrooms. And now we've got an office and the team and all of the sort of things that people expect, but it was actually a perfect time to do that. And. Climate communications has never been 100 percent of what I've done. It's always been sort of part of my job, and I've always done other things too, because if you're in an ad agency and you've got a science background, that's kind of unusual. So people will hook you in whenever they see something that they don't understand, or that requires a sort of technical mindset to engage with it. But it's always sort of fascinated me, and it's, you know, in my free time. I read about it, I think about it. It's, it's sort of a big focus. And so when we started Among Equals, We didn't want to just be a sustainability agency because it's very easy to get pigeonholed. The sad truth is that if you do sustainability work, people won't let you do a brand for their new beer or something like that. But if you do a brand for people's beer or you help them sell things, nothing that makes the world a worse place. We're very clear about that. But if you do that kind of work, you're then allowed still to do sustainability communications work, if that makes sense. You don't get pigeonholed. Okay. And so I, you know, I came into it because I was frustrated with how the climate movement was presenting itself. And then I came to the agency world and found a lot of people weren't being as scientific as I had expected either in terms of how they approach comms, but there's still lots and lots of knowledge that then and now is not really being applied to climate comms, which is quite bad. So I've spent the last four and a half years focused on the agency, not thinking about climate comms, sort of hoping it was getting better thinking, assuming it was getting better. And I've started talking to people again when I've had the time to put my head above the parapet, and we're not just, working day to day on the business. And found it really hasn't changed since four and a half years ago, or they've been incremental improvements, but by and large, climate communications is still a discipline that is not terribly well informed by either this from the ad and brand world, or tons and tons of research, which is being done in psychology and behavioral economics and disciplines like that. So the agency is a sort of commercial agency with a sustainability bent. But there's now we just launched a new offer all around sort of using behavioral change in psychology around good causes because we're just seeing not enough of it being done leveraging that insight to be effective, I guess. Okay, and so how do we fix climate communications? You know, what's what's missing from there? And what do we need to do to fix that? Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, it's really, really, really, that's a big question, but climate is it's psychologically complicated, right? And I think that's probably a lot of, you'll know that, a lot of your listeners will know that. But we don't always take that into account when we do comms. In fact, it seems we rarely do. You know, in the sustainability communications world, there's an awareness of eco anxiety now, for sure. People talk about that. But the fundamental psychology of climate change, like how we can actually engage with it as people, doesn't seem to be talked about that much. Or if it is, it's not thought about or applied. Right. You should go all the way back to our sort of ancient ancestors. I don't want to get too much into evolutionary psychology because Some people question the aspect of it, and I'm not a big expert in evolutionary psychology, but, you know, it makes a lot of sense to think we evolved in a world where we had to deal with, like, short term crises, urgent things. That tiger, or that saber tooth tiger, or whatever, is going to eat me, or I'm going to starve tonight. And we're quite good at dealing with that kind of urgent, acute crisis, but we don't seem very psychologically good. And whether it's because of those ancient ancestors or something else, we're not very good at this sort of slow, big crisis. And if you look at the sort of climate stuff or sustainability stuff where people have actually acted quite a lot quite quickly, or at least mindsets have shifted off, it's stuff that's felt acute. So if you think about the sort of the ozone crisis, it was something, you know, quite a few years ago now, but it kind of felt, Oh my God, this is urgent right now, this is happening right now, we need to solve it. Right now. And if you look at the plastics panic what are we sort of 2000, 2017, maybe obviously that had been building for a long time and scientists have been saying, Oh, you know, there's a bit of a problem here. We've got a lot of plastic building up in the oceans. Suddenly jumped into the public awareness. In a space of sort of six, eight months went from being something the public weren't aware of to something that suddenly a lot of people were aware of, thanks to Blue Planet, thanks to all kinds of things. And it felt like an acute crisis. Now, the actions that came out of that weren't actually very effective. You know, we don't, we haven't seen a huge drop in people, but there was an atmosphere suddenly where people wanted to drive change and people were talking about it. And I think it was because it felt like an acute moment of crisis, which we sort of good, Oh my God, this is happening right now. We need to solve it right now. And that's something that, for the wider climate change, you know, it's the opposite of that. I mean, Timothy Morton, the sort of philosopher talks about it as a hyper object, you know, and I haven't read their work recently, so I'm probably going to get some of this wrong, but the idea is, it's something, climate change is something so big and all encompassing that it's literally beyond comprehension, because it's kind of everywhere, all at once, affecting everything. So we have this thing that we're potentially psychologically quite ill equipped to engage with on the one hand. And on the other hand, we have an industry a communications. Maybe industry is the wrong word, but we have an ecosystem of climate communicators who are, for the most part, political progressives. As am I Don't know your politics, but, you know, if you care about the climate these days, you're probably a progressive. And so when dealing with this issue that people, I think, inherently find hard to engage with, we have approached it with a very aggressive mindset, which is fine, except that, you know, 40, 50, 60 percent of the public in most democracies don't have that mindset. And so we've got a sort of communications complex that is created and there's, you know, there's NGOs in this, there's businesses in this, there's creating comms that can only really be engaging to 40 something percent of the population at best. And a potentially actively off putting to others because they're framed in a highly progressive way, which is just not one that resonates with a lot of people, so we need to fix that. And finally, there is this body of work that psychologists have done, behavioral economists have done, that, exists within marketing for what's effective and not. And climate communicators don't seem to engage with it, to the point where basics of, sort of, marketing practice, one of the most fundamental basics is to start with your audience, right? Understand them and build communications that talk to them. But in climate comms, it's more like, understand the people who already care about the issue and talk to them. So much of the comms is preaching to the choir, and it's sort of almost set up inherently like that. And it's a big problem because I think that climate is fundamentally, sort of, climate change is a people problem. And I don't mean that there's too many people or that it's an individual responsibility. It's not, you know, it's a systemic problem that requires systemic solutions, but in sort of democracies, we're not going to get those systemic solutions you know, if there isn't voter pressure and so far, we're in a situation where 80 something percent of people in the UK, it's a lower but similar figure in the US and I think you'll find, a similar figure between 60 and 80 something percent of people across the sort of democratic world are concerned about climate change, but no one's really voting that in. You have Trump, you know, a man who is avowedly going to dismantle climate agreements or pull out of them. But an electorate in the US that actually is, you know, concerned if you survey them about climate change. But we just haven't framed any of it in a way that really speaks to people's day to day priorities. It's like the classic image of a polar bear. We all feel sad when we see the sad polar bear on the iceberg. But it's very distant from the average person's psychology. You know, there's a phenomenon called psychological distance, which is how close or far we feel from a topic or an issue. And the closer we feel, the more likely we're actually to do something about it. And it has a few different aspects. There's a temporal aspect. You know, is it happening now or is it happening in the future? There's a sort of geographical or spatial aspect. Is it close to me or far away? There's a social aspect. Is this happening to people I know? And then there's a sort of hypotheticality, might it not happen? And when we look at that polar bear on an iceberg, he lives a long way away from me. I don't socialize with many polar bears. His ice is maybe melting, maybe not. I don't know. So, you know, that polar bear is great for making me feel bad for a minute and great for making me sympathise. You want me to sympathise and donate a bit of money for that polar bear to be happy? Absolutely. But you want me to change my life? Because this polar bear who I've never met is having a bad time. That's kind of a different proposition and so we have this gap between concern that is quite high as people survey it and action which we know is really not enough and by action I do mean stuff like voting, you know, I do mean that systemic action as well as individual action. So, you know, I think that was a pretty long and rambling answer, but hopefully I kind of addressed your question there. Well, let's take a step back, because you've kind of touched on one of the big issues around climate. And that is that it has become a very polarised topic. I mean, back in the 80s, when the Montreal protocol was passed for ozone that you, you talked about. Climate was it wasn't talked about as much, but politically it wasn't polarised at all. I mean, it was a bipartisan issue in the US whereas now it's completely polarised. So, A, why? And B, is that something we can fix? Well, I hope so. I mean, otherwise, I mean, you might say we're in trouble already, but we'll be really bad for it. So yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. In 91, 92, 78% of Americans identified as environmentalists. And that was, you know, it was 50 50 across Republicans and Democrats. 2016, total percentage was something like 40%. Democrats were twice as likely to say they're environmentalists as Republicans. That was 2016. I don't know what the figure will be like now, but I'm sure it's worse. George Bush Sr. One of the major parts of his platform for his first, I think it was his first election, was solving global warming. And then, you know, a couple of years in, the lobbying from the oil companies is really looking quite persuasive, and no one's really putting any pressure on me, so maybe we can just kick this into the long weeds. And then since then, it's become this, as you say, this politicised issue. And this sort of leads back to the kind of thing I was saying before about the fact that we have framed it in progressive terms or perhaps more to the point we've failed to frame it in sort of conservative terms as well. So there's a few reasons for that, but first, what does that look like? So there's a guy called Lakoff, George Lakoff, I mean, a guy, you know, he's a leading cognitive linguist, probably in his eighties or something. He's not just a guy, you know, he's a long, he's written a bunch of fascinating books about mostly US politics, but also climate. And one of his sort of theses is that we have a sort of fundamental frame through which we understand the world. And there is a sort of there is a right wing conservative frame and a left wing progressive frame. And, you know, it's sort of fundamental progressive frame is engaged by and persuaded by things like the collective good and the sort of common future. And sort of ideas like that. Ideas which are. woven through all of our climate comms today versus a conservative mindset which is more driven by patriotism and protecting what we currently have. Literally, you know, little c conservative, let's protect what we have and sort of defending purity and the sort of more moral driven rather than outcome driven of the world. You could almost think of it as sort of, a morality driven worldview versus a sort of consequentialist outcome driven worldview. And we've failed for you know, I guess 20 something, 30 something, 40, I don't know, quite a long time now to really, not just climate comms, but particularly climate comms to frame it through that right wing conservative frame. And there's no reason why it shouldn't have been framed by that and couldn't be framed like that going forwards. It is not a stretch to frame fighting climate change as a patriotic act. It is not a stretch to say that we're sort of defending the purity of our ecosystem when we talk about climate change. And, at the last US election, though, it didn't work out. And actually a little bit before we have started to see the Democrats a little bit use some of that language in their climate communications. So, Biden was talking a bit about. you know, when he brought in various big legislative things that after the pandemic that included significant funding in sort of eco stuff. It was framed in a more patriotic way than has been traditional. And so there are small changes there, but there's a big problem, which is that I think on this issue, as with quite a few others, progressives would rather look good in front of other progressives than actually make a change. That might be a little bit unfair. There is a fear of being criticised by other progressives. That means that what you need to do. It's probably put stuff out there that things like you and me and people that listen to your podcast don't find very appealing. It might even make us feel a little bit uncomfortable, but that's what we will need to do to be effective. You know, we need to drape climate action in the flag. We need to tap into, I don't know, Churchill and Reagan and that kind of thing to get people to care about it, to reach beyond the converted, because so much communications, you know, it fails in other ways too, probably. But the first failure is that it's preaching to the choir, always. And so that we're never gonna get the political consensus that we need the action that we need whilst we are only talking to, you know, 30 something percent of the population who are already worried and already like to change. Thank you. Yeah, no point in, as you say, preaching to the converted. So we got to tell them that fixing climate will mean that no woman will ever want an abortion. I mean, hopefully we can find something that isn't quite, but yeah, I mean, you know, we need to engage with the, with the arguments that are appealing to people we may not agree with. And this is sort of what I was talking about. in climate comms it has been forgotten. The first basic principles of marketing, which is to understand your audience and the audience is more than just crowd control, but yeah, so hopefully not, you know, if we fix climate change, no one will ever want an abortion again, but I hope, you know, we do need to engage with what gets people going, you know, absolutely. Looking back on the American election, apparently one of the big trigger issues was the economy. So maybe we say fixing climate helps fix the economy because, you know, you won't have that many climate disasters, which cost hundreds of billions to fix. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think an economic argument around climate has been made, but it's been highly academic. You know, there's this sort of ecosystem services discourse. I think it's called something slightly different now, but it's the same idea. It's what's the financial back? And, you know, that's great. It's important work, but it's, it's incredibly difficult to understand. And I think the economy is a brilliant parallel because no one really understands the economy. You know, voters as a general rule don't understand economics. I mean, I've studied economics. And I don't understand it, that's for sure. So, you know, voters don't necessarily understand it, but you're absolutely right, the recent US election was definitely driven by that, and the feeling that people had that they were suffering economically, and Trump was taking that seriously. He was saying, I'm going to shake things up, and the Democrats weren't saying that. So, you know, smarter people than I will have done a better diagnosis of what's led to Trump's coming in, but the economy is a good example. So people don't really understand but it's in the top two or three or four issues at any given election is perceived economic competence of the person that they voted in, even though people don't really understand. And in climate, you know, I think people have moved on a little bit, but for decades, you know, their efforts, we make people understand climate change. Well, people don't understand the economy, but they understand that it matters for their lives. So they go and vote for it. And so we don't need to say mathematically, this is what climate means to the economy. We need people to understand that climate change is going to impact their lives in the same negative way that a poor economy does, and that solving it will impact their lives in a positive way, in the same way that a sort of positive economy will. And we need people to understand that argument sort of emotionally and feel that personal relevance. This is going to get you so that yes, an economic argument is part of it. But more like we need to think about how successful politicians frame arguments around the economy, which is we're going to make it better. And these are the bits of the economy that actually matters to you and take that lesson that no one understands the economics, but they still go and vote for whoever they think is going to do a good job in the economy. And so we need to get climate change up there and stop trying to make people understand it, and try and make people feel that it matters in the same way as the economy does, if that makes sense. What about the usage of very simplistic messages? Almost to your point. I have two examples I'm thinking of. Get Brexit Done. Three word slogan, massively successful. Won Boris the 2020 election. And the other one, which is kind of on the other side of the argument around climate is Just Stop Oil. And again, very simple three word slogan. Obviously, you can't just stop oil, obviously you can't just get Brexit done, but those two have encapsulated messages, to your point, no one understands the economy, so let's fix the economy, that kind of slogan for, for politicians. Let's stop oil isn't one that, that moves the Overton window too far and it doesn't bring in the kind of right leaning people that you're saying we need to address. So, but is that the kind of messaging, the kind of simplistic three word slogan motif bringing people in? That certainly has to be part of it. Just Stop Oil oil, I think it's a good slogan. I can't argue with that. Has it achieved a great deal of success? I'm not sure that it has, because I do think it's still, the whole movement is coming from that same crisis, activist, left wing kind of feeling, which doesn't really sit comfortably with not just conservatives, but an awful lot of people. But, you know, yes, I mean, Get Brexit Done was great because it also spoke to people. Everyone was sick. Even progressives were sick of the sort of endless, I mean, I would much rather we stayed in, but everyone was sick of this sort of endless discussion. And, the promise was we're going to stop having to talk about and hear about this thing every day. You can stop having to think about this tedious thing all the time. Now, obviously, we got to stop thinking about that tedious thing, and in the UK, it hasn't been great. Even people who voted out now agree that it was not great. But, that slogan promised relief from pain, almost. You know, this sort of existential, are we in, are we out? What's happening? This endless crisis negotiations. There was an argument made when Biden originally got in that part of what he was promising, not explicitly, but implicitly, was you have to hear less about politics for a while. Because Trump was so noisy, and you know, that visibility is always good, people are more likely to pick for things they've heard of, but he felt very noisy all the time in the US and, you know, there was an argument made that part of Biden's original appeal was, maybe we don't have to hear about this so much. Whether that was true or not, I don't know, but certainly for Get Brexit Done, like, absolutely, like, I don't want to hear about that anymore. So it was a short, pithy slogan, but it also spoke to how a bunch of people were thinking. And Just Stop Oil is good because it implies action, and I think in the sort of outside of the eco sphere, there's not a feeling that environmentalists whinge a lot and talk a lot and don't necessarily get things done, but it has been framed in a way, and the activists have acted in a way, as with Extinction Rebellion, as with, that is deeply appealing to a group that doesn't seem to have managed to translate into mainstream appeal or mainstream I should accept this inconvenience on my life. I need because it's worth it because this is big enough. This is important enough in real terms, if that makes sense. So I think we, we need those slogans, but we need more than that. So we need to make it relevant to people's daily lives. Yeah, absolutely. And so part of that is yes, because look, if it's not relevant to my daily life and you're telling me that. Or I understand that this is going to make things more expensive or more difficult, or I'm not going to have the things that I have today. Yeah, you've got to show that it's relevant to my daily life if I'm going to do those things. The polar bear over there is not enough. There's lots and lots of research that says that a more sustainable life will be a healthier life, and a happier life for people. there's lots of research says that and I, you know, I believe that, but people are used to a life with cars. They're used to a life with a high level of consumption and telling people they can't have those things, but they will be happier, that doesn't sound right. I mean, obviously we know it probably is right, but it doesn't it doesn't sound right to people. So climate sounds like sacrifice. Climate action sounds like I'm going to do less and people don't like to do less as things are now. So yeah, we have to show that it's relevant. Yes, we've got to show that they'll be happier too. But people think that there's a sacrifice inherent to it. You know, people think that a more sustainable household cleaning products is probably less effective. than the good old fashioned horrible bleach. You know, when they get, when they have a baby, and they start worrying about, is it safe around my child, then they're like, oh, maybe I'll get some eco cleaning products. But there's a, even today, after sort of 10, 15 years of Google Art Method and Ecovore and other brands like that, there's still a lot of consumers have this, oh, is it really going to clean properly, or do I want some proper old bleach that's really going to deal with it? There is belief that climate action will mean settling for less than I have now. Right. And so we need to solve that. But God, we need to make it relevant. We need to show people like, yeah, this problem is relevant to your day to day life. Obama's speechwriter said, the average American thinks about politics for four minutes a week. I don't know if that was based on research, or if it was just something, you know, a bit of received wisdom, but you know, I think that's probably broadly true, and I think for climate, it's like two minutes a week. And so, you know, people might be concerned, but are they concerned on the same level that what's going to be on the table for dinner tomorrow? God, I need to pick up the kids from school. Aren't the energy bills expensive right now? I'm feeling the pinch, you know, all of these different things, even before we have this sort of last couple of years of high level inflation and people's movements, those are just more pressing. And so we need to bring things down to a level and a scale, as well as framing them differently, both in terms of the impacts, but also the action that individuals feel like is directly relevant to them, and also a skill that they might have agency to actually do something meaningful about. If we think of how we frame climate change over the years to sort of believe in and understand, maybe understand came first and then there was a sort of urgency thing. Gosh, we need people to understand it's urgent. And there's been a sort of counter push to that by we need climate positivity. We need to talk about what's good and none of these things is the whole answer. In fact, all of them are only a small part of the answer. We probably need to be negative sometimes and positive other times. But all of the time, what we have failed to do is say, this is your day to day life. This is on a scale that you can engage with both the problems and the solutions, whether we're being scary or whether we're being joyful or whether we're trying to educate. And we know, we know that education isn't enough. We know that belief that people's actions are more likely to be driven by social norms and the things around them than they are to be driven by additional knowledge. So we need to look at what are those norms. Look at those things that are in your day to day life. Can we bring climate down to them? And there's a whole body of research by psychologists, by behavioral change professionals, by cognitive linguists that looks at exactly that. And it tends to be very specific. You know, it isn't necessarily easy to go and apply those lessons straight away into climate comms because academic literature tends to be very specific. You know, we've looked at such and such people in a specific country on a very specific question, but there are still actionable insights and things that we can translate to help us bring it down to people's day to day life. There's a bunch of work, you know, we talked about or I talked about some psychological distance earlier. And now there's some argument saying that well psychological distance from climate change might not be so far off for some people, maybe because we're beginning to feel the effects. But there's a whole literature out there about how to reduce. psychological distance in communications. There's a whole literature out there in terms of how to make something socially normal so that people are more likely to engage with it. And some of this is really simple and can be applied directly. Let's take a very, very practical example. There was an experiment in Stanford University, six, seven, maybe eight years ago. And they were looking at ways to get people to make more environmentally food choices in their canteen. Pick, the plant based option, not the meat based option. And if you put a poster up that says, you know, near the food Oh, it's better for the environment to choose the plant based option. It doesn't really change what anyone does. And you can put loads of facts up there. And it might change a couple of people, but it doesn't have a really dramatic impact. If you put a poster up there that say more and more people in this canteen are choosing a part based option. And then you can say because of the environment, and things, that drives a change.'cause people are, oh, people like me are doing this thing. People like me are concerned about this thing, so I should be concerned about this thing, so I should do this thing. It takes it down to a level, well, I'm not fighting climate change when I eat this steak or this, you know, cauliflower steak. I'm not personally, that that's far away, but if people like me are doing it more and more of them. Then I, maybe I should do that too. Cos whenever we're not sure, you know, whenever we're in a social situation where you're not really sure what we should be doing, which is a lot of the time, really, we look to those norms, we look to what others around us are doing, you know, when, when we walk into a library, we don't need to be told to be quiet, we know we should be quiet, because it's a social norm, and so much of the time, we fall back on those norms, and as communicators, we can tap into them. You know, and we could do that around climate, but instead, we've got climate that's, climate action's pretty unnormal, you know, who's doing it? It's like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, and those people might be admirable, I'm not saying, you know, but they're not, like, day to day relatable for most people. They're not setting a norm for most people. So yeah, there's, there's, there's a whole literature for bringing it down, putting it in people's personal lives, and it's not easy. But it is there. And so this is sort of what I'm saying. We need to, climate communicators need to try harder and read that stuff. So, giving people practical examples like it's going to affect the price and quality of your beer or your wine or your coffee or your olive oil or any of these things that you use day to day. Absolutely. And I mean, it's tricky because climate change is huge and those things are small. And so the temptation is to do sort of big communications. This is a global issue. We need global solutions. And we do. And it is. But, if we're going to talk to people, then communicators have to get specific and they have to try it out. What is this audience member into? There was a study, I think it was in the US, looking at birds, bird watchers, and if you see this local bird, this one that you're used to seeing is going to be in danger. There's going to be fewer of those in the next 10 years. That hits people way harder and then changes their opinion and changes their sort of stated preparedness to act far more than the global big picture stuff. Because it's relatable, it's right there. And yeah, chocolate could become unaffordable. Coffee could become unaffordable for most people. These could become niche, speckless products. And these are things that people do care about. And there's, there are other ways that are, you know, when the Pope talked about climate change, he tapped into Christian sort of symbols and language around climate change. The concept of Christian stewardship, the idea, I'm not a Christian and my Bible reading is a long time behind me. So there's an idea of stewardship in, in Christianity, the idea that sort of God gave Christians the earth to look after, to have a sense of responsibility for. And the Pope was able to tap into that language. And sure enough, you sort of survey people before and after that speech who are in that catholic community, they cared. And that wasn't because necessarily it's going to be your direct personal life. But it was made relevant through being framed in a way that was deeply relevant to them personally. It was a way that they, it was to do with their outlook on the world. And so there is stuff, absolutely, absolutely, you know, we need to talk to people about your coffee, your beer, your, your day to day products that you consume are going to be worse, more expensive, harder to get. But there's also just fundamentally framing things through people's worldviews or in ways that speak to people's worldviews, rather than, here's this big global issue. And do we need to change the language we use when we're talking to people as well about climate? Yes, I mean, there's been a big focus on that, but in the wrong ways. So, 2019, I think it was, the Guardian started talking about the climate crisis instead of climate change, and that was one of a number of, sort of, progressive groups that, for all the right reasons, said, we need to stop talking about climate change and we need to start talking about the climate crisis, because it's urgent now and we need people to understand that it's urgent and act on it. Now, And this is a great example. If people had gone and engaged with the academic literature, they would see that this sort of crisis framing has been tried with other issues, and it's at best a double edged sword. If you have a crisis, but it keeps rolling on for several years, I stop believing in it. Crisis is something that happens and we solve it, or, if it keeps going, is it a crisis? Two, it can be very off putting. You know, if something is too negative, and you're not giving me a solution pretty easily, pretty, maybe I just don't engage with the thing at all. There have been various efforts to reform the language, but they've been informed by what, you know, calling it a climate crisis went down really, really well with progressives. Yeah, now people are going to get how urgent this is, now we're going to see the change, but there was no evidence really that that was a good move. And I think lo and behold, you know, within a couple of years there had been studies that showed it wasn't a successful reframe, like that reframing hadn't done anything to shift people's thinking. And in common with other attempts to use crisis framing to solve issues. And so we absolutely need to look at the language that we use. We need to look at imagery, we the language we use. We need to look at, the sort of fundamental semiotic of how we frame the whole thing. So who's delivering the message? But we have to, 1) understand our audience first. 2) get specific about what it is we actually want to talk to them about, because it probably isn't the whole of climate change all at once. And then 3) when we've got that in mind, then go and find evidence based approaches to do that, whether that's from marketing and branding, whether that's from academia but you've only got to find those kind of solutions once you've said, okay, who is the actual audience and what specifically do I need to talk to them about? And ideally, what specifically do I need them to do differently, as I haven't seen this come because I'd say another part of it's just, you know, we're just pushing angst out into the world, right? Even the people who are getting engaged, an awful lot of climate comms is just very anxiety inducing, give people something to do or, or, or don't make them feel anxious probably. Otherwise, you're just gonna create disengagement., Yeah, no, that's one of the reasons I as I say, there's a huge amount of news out there about climate and 99% of it or more is negative or scary or tragic as we saw last year in Valencia with the floods or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I wanted to create a space where I was highlighting some of the good work that's been doing in the space so that. A, I could educate people on strategies that are working, hopefully inspire some more people to act, and then B, rather selfishly, I was making sure that I was hearing at least one good news story in the climate space every week, so I wasn't ending up in a fetal position on the floor crying my eyes out, so yeah, no, I can see. I can see that's important. Listen, Ollie, for, for people who are listening, you know, maybe aspiring communicators, what's the kind of top piece of advice you could give to them so that they could make a difference in climate action? I mean, take a step back and understand that if you want to talk about these things, you're probably not the audience. I mean, you're definitely not the audience. It's true for all sorts of issues, but you're far closer to it than the audience is or ever will be. So the first thing you need to do is take a step back and actually honestly say, who is the audience? Who do I actually need to engage and persuade? Because it's not, it's not you. And you have to accept that the thing that most might be most effective is not the thing that you would actually like personally to put out into the world. Obviously, don't compromise your values. Don't say stuff that you think is bad, but you've got to take that step back and be open to the fact that the solution might not be one that you find personally appealing. And then you've got to go and do the research. You've got to go and read. boring some of it because you've got to filter through a bunch of academic papers or a bunch of books, but also just be honest, apply common sense in a way that we seem not to be able to do. We all know if we're in a restaurant or in a pub or in a supermarket, the kind of things we have to say to persuade people, we all know how to do that. Persuade people we don't like or we don't get along with. I mean, we know that we, we sort of, I don't want to say compromise our truth, that sounds bigger, but we know that we put an edited version of our message to those people out in the real world to get what we want, and we need to do that as a climate movement, and as a progressive movement more generally, probably so it's, yeah, my one piece of it is take a step back, Understand who it actually is and then go read about it, go understand it, go talk to some of those people, go engage with the media that they engage with, and think about how you can put your message in their terms because if we don't do that, I, you'll, you want to hear good news stories, and the good news is we can do this, there's evidence out there for how to do it, but if we don't do that, we don't have a good news story, we've got a, we've got a bad news story, Left field question, Ollie, if you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional, as kind of a, an example for successful climate communication, who would it be and why? that is, so what, well, so, I mean, if I could have someone be a climate communicator, I mean, I might pick Churchill, actually. Like, hugely controversial figure in many ways. Not a nice man, almost certainly. You know, I mean, pretty dark history on the colonialism side of things. But hugely effective communicator to a mass audience in a time of crisis. And, you know, that's the, that's the kind of thing we actually created a brand for an environmental sort of movement to try and pass some environmental laws in the UK. And one of the things we looked at was Churchill's speeches and they ended up using the graphics we created. They didn't end up using that much of that language, but I genuinely think it would have been very effective. Because it's language of struggle. It's language of like things aren't necessarily gonna be great right now, but they are going to get better. And we have to do this thing. And it's important. It's language of pragmatic hope, language of sort of determination. And I think we could definitely use all of those things in the climate message. And we could use that, you know, conservative frame that he brought, not saying he's a good person or anything. Or was a good person. Obviously, he's still not. But, you know, I think he would have been, he would have been a brilliant climate communicator because of those traits and because of that ability to engage people around tough calls. Yeah, very true. Very true. have to fight them on the beaches, apparently. So, okay. Good. Fight them them for the beaches, otherwise they'll wash away. Fair point. Fair point. Yep. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Ollie, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this, we haven't touched on that. You think it's important for people to be aware of? I think it's important that people realise this is a self inflicted failure of climate communications. You know, we have done this to ourselves, probably through wishing for the best and positive ideology. We have done this to ourselves. And obviously, making climate communications better is not going to solve everything. And there's sort of people in the ad industry who think if we can make ads sort of climate conscious, that will change everything. And I don't have the ego to think, you know, it's a small part of the solution. But, we've known about climate change in one form or another since, you know, I mean, latest, the fifties and latest, the hard times, I guess, the seventies to really, really know. And we've had an awful lot of the technology since then. So I genuinely do think that there is a, there is a need to persuade. You know, we're not gonna we're inventing new tech. We're refining the science that this is important and helpful and useful, and we need it. But if we can't persuade the majority of people that they need real change really quite soon, none of that tech is going to really matter that much. And so I think it is a people problem, and the failures have mostly been self inflicted. And so I would say, you know, if you talk to people in any form about climate. Take a step back and say, am I actually doing this the most effective way possible, or am I doing this in a way that's going to appeal to other people who already like me? Because, yeah, I do think it is self inflicted, but for the right reasons. I don't want to get a bunch of people angry. I'm not saying Climate UK is bad or even bad at their jobs. And there's loads of people out there doing good work, but there's just not enough of it. It's not the norm, necessarily. Ollie, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? So, there isn't a great deal on our website because, as I said, for the last four and a half years, we've really been focused on just running our business. But there will, in the future, be more or at least links from AmongEquals. co. You know, climate stuff, you know, we do a lot of work with startups and all kinds of work. Sustainability is just a small area of our work. I will be posting more about it on LinkedIn, but honestly, I would say just go out and read. I have made part of my career around translating the insights of psychology and behaviour change into communications and campaign stuff. But there's lots of other people doing that. Go engage with the original stuff, you know. The British, Psychological Association puts out a newsletter every couple of weeks, which is full of fascinating stuff. It's not always about climate, it's about all kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of people out there putting psychological and other forms of research into more digestible formats. Go and engage with that. Yeah, sure. Follow me. Sure. Send me a message if you want to talk about any of this stuff. Absolutely. I find it fascinating, but there's loads of content out there. It's just people need to actually go and read it. And they don't currently because it's boring. It's technical. It's just not something they think to look at. So go do that. And then if you want to come talk to me, sure. Ollie, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me, Tom. It's been a pleasure. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.