Action Items

Action items suggested by the book:

• "Restoring past lost" may be more effective that pushing for "current improvement

• Accept the spectrum of approaches suggested by the many players, all pushing in the same direction

• Avoid counting on "blame" to generate climate action

• Be alert to your own and others' biases - seek out a wide range of views

• Build a narrative of cooperation that brings people together around a common cause

• Climate stories need to follow narrative rules: recognizable actors, motives, causes, and effects

• Communicators should drop the "eco-stuff" that classifies issue as "environmental"

• Communicators should recognize the role of their own emissions

• Don't focus on the other side's metrics like "jobs" and "energy security

• Emphasize that action on climate change makes us proud of who we are

• Enable communications with built-in interaction - build communities of shared conviction

• Encourage positive visions, but remember that social cues may repel others

• Explore the potential of "sacred values"

• Frame climate change as an informed choice between outcomes - showing the implications of inaction

• Present climate change as a journey of conviction

• Proximity needs to be in time and type (not polar bears)

• Recognize people's feelings of grief and anxiety

• Resist simple framing and be open to new meanings

• Self-interest is a poor motivator

• Symbolic moments can be as important as direct impact

• We have the right values. We need to activate cooperative values rather than competitive values

• Stress what we have in common - better life for our children, health, security, thriving communities

• We need to affirm wider values to close the partisan gap

• Requires understanding and validating values, and THEN showing how climate speaks to those values

• Wider values include respect for authority, personal responsibility, loyalty to community, avoiding inter-generational debt, reducing societal dysfunction

• Appealing to personal self-interest is a questionable climate strategy

• Ensure that a wide range of solutions is constantly under review

• Money is important, but is a proxy for other ends'

• Relate solutions to climate change to sources of happiness and connections with friends, neighbors