Connection Over Confrontation: Designing a New Playbook for Climate Communications

In the world of corporate communications, we often talk about cohesive messaging and strategic framing. But when it comes to climate change—a topic that’s become politically charged—these tools alone aren’t enough. The real challenge isn’t just informing or persuading—it’s connecting.

Too often, climate messages are layered on top of political discourse, moral urgency or international competitiveness. We see doomsday headlines on one end and overly subdued reporting on the other, with little space for the middle ground.

This binary framing fails to resonate with audiences who don’t already share the communicator’s values. It’s not that people don’t care—it’s that the messaging doesn’t land.

What if we took a different approach to climate communications, shifting the center of gravity from traditional communications channels and embedding climate narratives into familiar, trusted contexts, to foster better understanding and action without confrontation?

Embedded Communications

Embedding communications about climate change into more familiar, “everyday” interactions can help normalize the subject and be a powerful way to deliver the tangible benefits of environmentalism. This approach connects with people through relevance. It moves beyond headlines and grounds abstract risks into personal solutions.

Framing environmental messages around positive outcomes—like job readiness, enhanced infrastructure and cost savings—creates a shared value narrative that resonates across diverse perspectives. This kind of embedded communication is fundamentally different from the tendency to treat climate as a niche topic or layer it on top of a partisan issue.

Trusted Sources

At the recent Aspen Ideas Climate Conference, I met a health care professional who embeds climate risk into patient care, leading efforts to address the intersection of climate change and public health. She spoke of medicine and primary care as central to the climate conversation, not peripheral.

Frontline clinicians see the health impacts from climate change firsthand—whether it be asthma exacerbated by wildfire smoke or heat-related illness. Primary care doctors possess a unique ability to bridge communications divides using contextual anchors to have hard conversations. In this way they are one of the best conduits of reliable, trusted information there is.

This is the difference between embedded communication and layered messaging. Embedded communication weaves climate into the fabric of everyday life—health care, education, employment—rather than treating it as a siloed issue.

A New Communications Playbook

To optimize climate communications, we need a new playbook. We need to move beyond data and policy briefs and ground abstract messages into visceral, personal solutions. That means telling stories that reflect real lives, not just carbon metrics. It means showing how clean energy can stabilize household budgets, how climate resilience can protect aging parents, and how shared prosperity is possible without ideological conformity.

This approach mirrors our interpersonal relationships. In climate communications, that might mean leading with conversations around improved neighborhood infrastructure or economic concerns—not global temperature (“net zero”) targets.

That shift in communications style creates space where trust can grow and perspectives can evolve. It’s not about abandoning facts; it’s about embedding them in narratives that feel human, relatable and actionable.

Framing Is Everything

Communications professionals know that framing is everything. And the most powerful frame is one that invites people in, rather than drawing a line between “us” and “them.” As communicators, we must ask: why are we clinging to climate storytelling rooted in moral arguments when it isn’t moving the needle, but in fact, hindering progress?

Instead, we must focus on pragmatic conversations about the universal advantages of a clean transition. Once messages shift from blame to benefits, only then will environmentalism be deemed good for business.

Climate change is not just an environmental issue; it’s a human one. If we want to build a future that works for everyone, our communications must reflect that truth—not by converting, but by connecting.

Let’s focus on connection when it comes to climate communications and our shared future on this planet. That’s where the real story begins, one where we move past debates and into real conversations.