The Climate Access blog is the place for leading climate thinkers and doers to highlight and respond to key developments and findings on climate communications and behavior change. 

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CLIMATE ACCESS BLOG

May 15, 2012
Meeting the Challenge
Cara Pike

In recent years, much of the progress on climate and sustainability has been made at the local level. The opposition to action on climate knows this, and the Tea Party, John Birch Society and others are seeding the idea that sustainability plans are part of an international conspiracy via Agenda 21

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May 8, 2012
Conservatives for Conservation
David Minkow

The name is no longer Republicans for Environmental Protection, but the greenest group on the right side of the U.S. political spectrum is continuing its efforts to ensure that the term is not an oxymoron. ConservAmerica wants to make protecting the environment a non-partisan issue, and hopes that the name change will open new doors for the group, according to communications director Jim DiPeso.

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April 30, 2012
What happens when the choir won’t sing?
KC Golden

Have climate campaigners learned the art of political communication too well?  We poll and focus group.  We segment audiences and target swings. We “go to people where they’re at” – activating live communication frames and salient issues. We move the dial. There is tactical merit in all this…but climate change is not a “message.”

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April 17, 2012
Making Friends with Fatalism
Renee Lertzman

As Aldo Leopold wisely wrote, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”  This is particularly true when it comes to climate change. We live in a time where one can indeed feel alone in a world of wounds, despite a resounding chorus of scientific evidence.  When faced with this situation, it makes perfect sense to retreat into a state of despair, futility and fatalism.

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April 10, 2012
More Certain About Uncertainty
Cara Pike

I recently attended the “Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change: How do we Address Uncertainty” symposium at Rutgers University where I learned from leading climatologists and social scientists* a few simple concepts that help make the connection between the increased intensity and frequency of storms and global warming. While it may still be too early to attribute individual storms to climate change, there is a lot we are certain about that can be emphasized.

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April 10, 2012
At Least a Glimmer of Hope
David Minkow

Perhaps even more important than the percentage of people who accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change is the number of people who believe that something can be done about it. This is because when—and I believe it is a matter of when, not if—the public truly wakes up to climate change as a mortal danger, it will be critical that people feel at least a glimmer of hope that the harm can be minimized.

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March 27, 2012
Exposing Heartland: Interview with DeSmogBlog editor Richard Littlemore
David Minkow

The key, according to DeSmogBlog editor Richard Littlemore, is whether you can live with your decisions. Although it felt “tantamount to walking up to a power line,” he remains quite at peace with the decision last month to publish documents revealing the Heartland Institute’s strategy to undermine climate science in the classroom and the media and to keep them published in the wake of climate scientist Peter Gleick’s admission that he had acquired the documents through false pretenses.

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